tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24696633504842275232018-02-18T04:58:27.628-08:00NDÉ ISDZÁNÉ ŁANOHWILE’~~Lipan Apache Women Defense ~~El Calaboz Rancheria, Rio Grande/Rio BravoNDE&#39; SELF-GOVERNANCE &amp; SELF-DETERMINATION
EL CALABOZ RANCHERIA,
Texas-Mexico Bifurcated Region,
Konitsaii Gokiyaa (Lipan Apache Homeland)WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.comBlogger119125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-41602117601927314892013-02-28T13:48:00.000-08:002013-02-28T13:48:13.734-08:00LAW Defense Has a New Cyber Home and Look!<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">We have <span style="font-size: large;">expanded</span> <span style="font-size: large;">and rebuil<span style="font-size: large;">t<span style="font-size: large;">.</span></span></span> </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Please follow this <a href="http://lipancommunitydefense.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">path</a><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;"> to the new location.</span> </span>&nbsp; <span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">T</span>hank you for supporting LAW Defense since 2007.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">There is much more to prepare for... </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Indigenous peoples <span style="font-size: large;">-- </span>now<span style="font-size: large;"> and the future. </span>&nbsp; </span></div><br />WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-38085357399090321682012-09-14T20:21:00.000-07:002012-09-14T20:21:03.607-07:00CHIRAPAQ: Indígenas de Fronteras (Noticias)<img alt="Indígenas de fronteras" class="blog-post-image" src="http://www.chirapaq.org.pe/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Eloisa-Garcia.jpg" /> <br /><div class="datecomment"> 14th sep 2012 <span class="postedin">SECCIONES: <a href="http://www.chirapaq.org.pe/seccion/noticias" rel="category tag" title="Ver todas las entradas en Noticias">Noticias</a></span> </div><div id="title"> Indígenas de fronteras </div><strong>Los impactos de la colonialización vista por las mujeres Lipan Apache en la frontera México-Texas.</strong><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">La organización <a href="http://lipanapachecommunitydefense.blogspot.com/" target="_blank" title="Lipan Apache Women Defense">Defensa de las Mujeres Lipan Apache</a> presentó, en Mayo, un informe ante el Comité para la Eliminación de la Discriminación Racial CERD, sobre el muro fronterizo entre México y Texas. Ellas solicitaron a esta instancia de la ONU el emitir una alerta temprana por las continuas violaciones a los derechos humanos cometidos por los Estados Unidos contra los pueblos indígenas y los latinos pobres a raíz de esta construcción. Entre los atropellos cometidos, el reporte consignaba el uso desproporcional de la fuerza armada y la expropiación forzada de territorios indígenas.</span><br /> <span style="font-size: large;">No era la primera vez. En 2008 la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos convocó a una audiencia sobre el muro. En esa ocasión Margo Tamez, relató como su construcción afectó la autonomía del pueblo Lipan Apache para movilizarse dentro de su propio territorio y acceder a sus sitios sagrados.</span><br /> <span style="font-size: large;">Tamez es hija de Eloisa Garcia, reconocida lideresa indígena de ascendencia Lipan Apache, Nahua y española. Ella ha mantenido una serie de demandas contra el Gobierno de Estados Unidos sobre el muro que dividió a la mitad el territorio ancestral de su pueblo. Junto con su madre, Tamez impulsó una serie de acciones judiciales nacionales e internacionales, para detener sus impactos y dar a conocer al mundo la situación de las mujeres indígenas en la frontera.</span><br /> <span style="font-size: large;">Ella visitó Lima-Perú, como delegada de la <a href="http://www.freewebs.com/laredxicanaindigena/" target="_blank" title="Red Xicana Indígena">Red Xicana Indígena</a>, durante una jornada que sostuvo el Enlace Continental de Mujeres Indígenas de las Américas ECMIA en esta ciudad.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.chirapaq.org.pe/noticias/indigenas-de-fronteras" target="_blank">Seguir leyendo...</a> </span>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-70926203591404162532012-09-07T12:01:00.002-07:002012-09-08T11:40:01.253-07:00Nde' Woman to be Trained in Truth Commission; Will examine history of Indigenous Treaties, Land Claims and Dispossession in South Texas--Mexico border and relations to current human rights violations<br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Nde' North American Newswire</b></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b></b></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>September 7, 2012</b></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><b>(Vernon, British Columbia, Canada)</b></span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>&nbsp;<i>Indigenous Peoples' Truth &amp; Memory must be Explored in Depth and through a Formal Mechanism</i></b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>On September 24, 2012, <a href="http://www.ubc.ca/okanagan/ccgs/faculty/tamez.html" target="_blank">Margo Tamez</a> will be joining a select group of internationally recognized experts in the <a href="http://ictj.org/event/fourth-intensive-course-truth-commissions" target="_blank">Fourth Intensive Course on Truth Commissions</a>, to be held in Barcelona, Spain.</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Founded by the International Center for Transitional Justice (<a href="http://ictj.org/" target="_blank">ICTJ</a>) and the Barcelona International Peace Resource Center (<a href="http://www.bcnpeacecenter.cat/" target="_blank">BIPRC</a>), this 4th Intensive Course on Truth Commissions will focus this year on the challenge of recognizing the experiences of vulnerable populations in the work of truth commissions.</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Key to the work this year are the following questions:</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Under what conditions can truth commissions make a positive contribution to gender justice? How can they put in place a friendly process for children? Can they contribute to the rights of indigenous peoples? What are the practical and conceptual considerations facing mediators, donors, and international and national actors as they engage with truth commissions?</b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>This course is intended to provide practitioners with an opportunity to reflect on these and related questions under the guidance of leading experts in the field of transitional justice.</b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Margo Tamez, an <a href="http://www.lipanapachebandoftexas.com/index.html" target="_blank">Nde'</a> ('Lipan Apache') human rights defender, educator, researcher, poet, critic, and advocate for Indigenous peoples, emphasizes the significance of organizing a Truth Commission alongside Indigenous peoples in the Texas-Mexico region as a collective and community-based process based upon traditional and academic knowledge systems.&nbsp; "This process is based on a research partnership created between Nde' knowledge experts and myself over many years."&nbsp; </b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>In 2007, a significant number of Indigenous peoples were violently dispossessed of their traditional lands when the U.S. government and a number of powerful corporations and independent military contractors coordinated the construction of the border wall.&nbsp; Since 2009, many families and communities lives have been shattered by the destructive process which unfolded, often in secrecy, and which denied them the right to Free Prior and Informed Consent, the right to meaningful consultation, and opened the path for the escalation of militarization, severance and containment into militarized and policed zones, and further deterioration of Indigenous livelihoods, ownership of lands, access and decision-making relative to traditional food and water sources, and the rights to self-determination as enshrined in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_on_the_Rights_of_Indigenous_Peoples" target="_blank">UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples</a>, endorsed on December 15, 2010 by the <a href="http://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/united-states/victory-us-endorses-un-declaration-rights-indigenous-peoples" target="_blank">United States.</a></b></span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" src="http://www.truth-out.org/files/030912-7c.jpg" /></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Tamez is enthusiastic about the opportunity to learn among an international group of high-level human rights advocates and experts, and is looking forward to infuse her process with Indigenous research perspectives and the first-hand knowledge and experiences of Nde' and related Texas-Mexico indigenous peoples.&nbsp; "It is a great honor to be selected by ICTJ to participate in this work session and training, as there are many qualified individuals who apply from around the world, and only a few are selected to participate. This course is a logical 'next step' in an organized process to expose truth, memory, and experience from the perspective of Indigenous Peoples in the Texas-Mexico region at the international level.&nbsp; At the same time, it affords me the chance to learn about organizing and implementing a Truth Commission on the 'ground' in the United States in order to transform normative practices which naturalize discrimination and violence against Indigenous peoples."&nbsp; </b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>A <a href="http://ubc.academia.edu/TAMEZMARGO/Papers/1874302/The_Situation_of_the_Texas-Mexico_Border_Wall_A_Request_for_Consideration_under_the_Early_Warning_and_Urgent_Action_Procedures_of_the_United_Nations_Committee_on_the_Elimination_of_Racial_Discrimination_80th_Session_by_Ariel_Dulitzky_and_Margo_Tamez_et_al" target="_blank">recent study</a> submitted to the United Nations conducted by the University of Texas School of Law Human Rights Clinic, the Human Rights Clinic Director, <a href="http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/aed636/" target="_blank">Ariel Dulitzky</a>, and Tamez has demonstrated that Indigenous peoples' realities of this large region have been instrumentally marginalized, and systematically obscured in the every day legal, social, economic and political institutions of Texas and the U.S.&nbsp; As evidenced by the <a href="http://www.utexas.edu/law/centers/humanrights/borderwall/analysis/" target="_blank">2008 study on the human rights violations </a>of the Texas-Mexico border wall submitted to the Organization of American States by faculty of the University of Texas School of Law more critical tools and methods have been required to interrogate the states' practices which demand closer scrutiny.&nbsp; Truth Commissions have contributed significantly to exposing root problems and structuring the transformation in the everyday practices of the state and society.&nbsp; For Tamez, Texas, the U.S. and Mexico are equally culpable in obstructing Indigenous people's inherent rights to a traditional land-base and to self-determination.&nbsp; According to Tamez, this includes the rights to Free Prior and Informed Consent, consultation, participation in decision-making, benefits sharing, and redress for historical dispossession from the spiritual, cultural, social and economic benefits of their traditional land-base.&nbsp;</b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>"Indigenous peoples' sovereign status in our home lands and inherent rights to self-determination in our home lands predated the occupation and colonization of our spirits, minds, bodies, lands and resources by foreign Crowns.&nbsp; Our inherent rights to all of these were never extinguished by full consent; tactics of coercion, force, deceit and manipulation underlie the colonial system called 'democracy' and 'rights'.&nbsp; Unfortunately, within those systems is very little room for Indigenous law principles:&nbsp; Respect, Reciprocity, Responsibility and Redress.&nbsp; Today, the fact still remains, regardless of the colonial court opinions and rulings and that is that Nde' peoples never ceded inherent rights to Aboriginal lands title, nor to self-determination.&nbsp; The investigation into human rights violations related to the issues of the border wall-- being myriad and wide-scale-- require more in-depth attention and study into Indigenous people's memory, knowledge, and dispossession with regard to treaties, other constructive arrangements, and 3rd party treaties."</b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>For Tamez, who comes from a traditional background, and who is working to revitalize Indigenous knowledge systems in everyday life, the Truth Commission is an opportunity to interweave traditional Indigenous knowledge with critical human rights analysis.&nbsp; "I am seeking to learn how the Doctrine of Discovery, and subsequent systems of dispossession and genocide denial laid the ground for state and nation impunity and how this area is known and defined by Indigenous peoples across the inter-generational memory and as evidenced in the primary sources existing in Indigenous communities, in oral history and oral testimony studies.&nbsp; The official obfuscation of these forms of evidence in settler institutions have created, in my mind, a fertile environment for the escalation of extreme violence and impunity exercised by powerful interest groups throughout the region.&nbsp; Documented genocide and current-day human rights violations in the Texas-Mexico border region will continue to be trivialized if a Truth Commission is not developed.&nbsp; This effort to become formally educated in this legal instrument deserves the serious attention of a collective and I seek to be a path breaker alongside Indigenous knowledge keepers to hold responsible parties and entities to account.&nbsp; The truth is in the public's and greater society's best interest."&nbsp;&nbsp;</b></span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span><img height="369" id="il_fi" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/26/Wpdms_republic_of_texas-2008-19-11.svg/300px-Wpdms_republic_of_texas-2008-19-11.svg.png" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="300" /></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Since the U.S. government constructed the border wall on the Texas-Mexico border in 2009, Tamez' research has shed light on the severity of impacts suffered by Indigenous Peoples.&nbsp; Her journey has opened up much obscured documents, archives, and collected facts related to a very large Indigenous population residing in many counties along the Texas-Mexico border.&nbsp; Tamez has sought to educate the public about Indigenous peoples' struggles, challenges, aspirations, knowledge systems, and to "unpack" how Indigenous peoples' identities have been severely distorted and "mangled" through the state's administrative procedures to assimilate Native Americans, seeking to terminate Indigenous culture and world view systems hand-in-glove with stealing Indigenous property.&nbsp; "The average person in U.S. and Mexico society is bombarded with biased misinformation about Indigenous peoples that is highly suspect, in other words, full of ideology, fantasy, and fiction, <i>not </i>the diverse and complex reality. Unfortunately, less-than-critical thinking abounds in U.S. and Mexico society, as a direct result of discriminatory education systems and false media portrayals which tied to corporate development interests.&nbsp; This behavior pattern is deeply ingrained in the dominant culture, and fuels each generations' learned ignorance and biases against Indigenous peoples' and society's best interests.&nbsp; In turn, this serves to deny Indigenous peoples the rights to practice our cultures--which are interdependent with&nbsp; our traditional lands, territories and resources.&nbsp; The ongoing denial of these fundamental needs persists as a colonial form of domination, and Indigenous peoples' resistances against genocidal violence--at every institutional level--is largely framed as 'domestic terrorism' and 'illegal' rather than anti-oppression and in the society's best interest.&nbsp; There is a huge communication divide and violence permeates this space and fills it to such an extent that many people have difficulty&nbsp; 'reading' the root of the problem without significant processes of re-education.&nbsp; A Truth Commission serves the broader public need for diverse and alternative versions of a profound truth being repressed in an organized manner."</b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>"A Truth Commission could serve an instrumental purpose in the United States and Mexico border region in light of the militarization programs and unresolved jury trials related to forced and armed dispossession exercised by the Department of Homeland Security against certain communities.&nbsp; These issues obviously were repressed by the Bush administration, and have been severely peripheralized by the Obama administration, costing the affected Indigenous peoples and taxpayers enormous resources better applied toward improving social relations and systems with the consent of the peoples.&nbsp; Unfortunately, the border wall--and each preceding system which worked to obstruct Indigenous self-determination in Texas--has been built on historical patterns of ignorance and genocide denial.&nbsp; The border wall fed societies' frenzied zeal to build a physical barricade across Indigenous-owned lands, as Chertoff said, "by any means possible."&nbsp; This battle cry against vulnerable peoples on the Texas border--considered a severely structured poverty zone on global scale--fed a negation of an major reality.&nbsp; That reality is this--the Indigenous peoples' presence and social movements for recognition at all levels are decolonizing North America.&nbsp; This reality is unsettling (calling into question) the settler society's and elites' domination and supremacy over knowledge, truth, land, and resources."&nbsp;&nbsp;</b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Tamez emphasizes the importance of historical and social contexts of a shared history between colonizers and colonized, and the crucial role of state, private, and powerful interest groups who constructed "edited versions" of history.&nbsp; Tamez argues that a state's education "disciplines" the state's subjects&nbsp; into ingesting a dominant version of "one and only one truth."</b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>"The history of history writing in Texas, Mexico and the U.S. about Lipan Apaches is a sad example of anti-Indigenous racism as core to the project of colonization of the land's resources for and by the few;&nbsp; the region is a complex one, and involves many shared histories between sovereigns, settlers, colonizers and the colonized Indigenous peoples--over many complicated and detrimental processes which have continued to be an open wound for the current generation who live out this violent power relationship every day."&nbsp;&nbsp;</b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>One major significance of a Truth Commission is that it can enable and empower vulnerable peoples to frame collective rights and to be deeply involved in the creation of alternative justice and tribunal spaces.&nbsp; This is key to raising participation and decision-making in geopolitical areas where the states' juridical system fails to redress and to restitute the rights of Indigenous peoples in its everyday procedures.&nbsp; "The reality we must confront in the Texas-Mexico border is that it is a site of severe human rights violations, a zone of normalized impunity, a 'no constitution' zone, where the State and nation have protected perpetrators and not protected the rights of vulnerable Indigenous peoples.&nbsp; This is an embedded pattern that has failed to serve the rights of Indigenous peoples for many generations and must be disrupted."&nbsp;</b></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>&nbsp;&nbsp; </b></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>According to ICTJ, the program examines truth-seeking as part of a comprehensive approach to deal with massive human rights violations, with the aim of building sustainable peace, strengthening the rule of law, and contributing to reconciliation in divided societies.</b></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>For Tamez, the road to a Truth Commission has been without question one indebted to recovering Nde' knowledge and relationships which require the enactment of the "4 R's" of Indigenous principles, laws and protocols:&nbsp; Respect, Reciprocity, Responsibility and Relevance.&nbsp; "I am deeply grateful to the Nde' Elders, Traditional Chiefs, Council Members, and the many Nde' Clan leaders, family heads, and traditional leaders, as well as our Nde' families, youth, and workers who have been my teachers.&nbsp; As an Nde' researcher and advocate for the human rights of Indigenous peoples, I have been most impacted by the severe barriers and obstructions to justice that Nde' and numerous related Indigenous groups experience in their daily struggle in Texas and the U.S. for their most elemental, fundamental rights to be recognized: as Indigenous Peoples and title holders of the traditional territory of Konitsaii Gokiyaa--and as core decision-makers on all aspects affecting them in the Lipan home lands.&nbsp; My education is for the Peoples."</b></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Since 2008, Tamez and Elders of El Calaboz Rancheria with their many partners across civil society have worked diligently to educate the broader public in Texas, Mexico, the United States, and the international community about the serious human rights violations which occurred at each stage of the process of the U.S. border wall construction.&nbsp; However, for Tamez, what has been most disturbing is the Indigenous peoples' revelations through oral testimony and oral history of a&nbsp; penetrating pattern of a grim situation between the state of Texas, its founding families and the broader settler society--and Indigenous Nde' peoples affiliated with many treaties, Crown land grants, and other sovereign to sovereign agreements made with European colonizers.&nbsp; The ongoing denial of Lipan Apache formal and constitutional recognition by Texas, Mexico, and the United States is an open wound that will not heal until formally redressed, according to Tamez.&nbsp; A key flash point requiring immediate attention is Indigenous peoples' documented challenges to Mexico, Texas and the U.S. treaties which constructed a border and a wall through the middle of Lipan Apache traditional homeland and territory.&nbsp; This barrier to&nbsp; Nde' self-determination and international recognition&nbsp; underlies Nde' peoples' calls for a Truth Commission. &nbsp; </b></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><b>"I will be responding closely to the official mandate of the Lipan Apache Band of Texas, the traditional authorities of Hereditary Chiefs and Elders, as well as the Traditional Societies who in 2011 at the El Calaboz Gathering on Nde' Knowledge, Lands, Territories and Human Rights called for the development of a Truth Commission and an alternative justice space through which truth, memory and justice could be advanced on the many human rights violations associated with the U.S. border wall, militarization, land dispossession, structured poverty, and non-recognition that is endemic to administrative genocide to Lipan Apache peoples and cultural survival.&nbsp; At the very root of all these issues is a most disturbing history and pattern of genocidal violence, dispossession, and extreme marginalization of Nde' peoples by the Texas settler society, Mexico, and the U.S. federal government which positions Nde' title holders as 'in-betweens' in terms of political status.&nbsp; Recognized as an 'enemy Nation' by all three governments in their historical documentation of their treaties with Lipan Apaches, none of them officially resolved their obligations and duties to Nde' sovereigns after 1848.&nbsp; Rather, each constructed legal practices --formal and informal -- that normalized extermination policies.&nbsp; By 1872, after the Remolino Massacre on the Texas-Mexico border, extermination became the institutionalized form of dominating Nde' into submission and assimilation.&nbsp; Lynching, murdering, starving, and imprisonment became institutionalized norms to repress uprisings and rebellion.&nbsp; State and Catholic education were used to institutionalize physical, spiritual, and psychological abuse which disciplined generations of Nde'.&nbsp;&nbsp;</b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>A key element which is extremely relevant and consistent is the depth of organized violence across Nde' generations in South Texas and along both sides of the Rio Grande.&nbsp; Nde' peoples' documented resistances and defenses of Lipan Apache home lands and objections to being assimilated as a 'minority group' or 'ethnic group' of Mexico, Texas or U.S. demands re-thinking.&nbsp; " The fictive narrative of the 'extinction' or 'disappearance' of the anthropological construction of 'Lipan Apaches' is a total construct of the colonizer and its key functionaries--militarized anthropologists, archaeologists and geologists.&nbsp; These paved the way very early for the lands to be occupied and put into so-called 'private property'.&nbsp; In my mind, the national parks systems are killing fields, emptied of the 'house owners' for the benefit of the burglars.&nbsp; Studying the primary sources from an Indigenous viewpoint helps us grapple in a serious way, using more refined tools, with a research program on Nde' memory and knowledge systems."&nbsp;&nbsp;</b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Beneath </i>the border wall are layers of dispossession issues and issues of incarceration of Nde' that are unresolved and enduring.&nbsp; The situation of the illegal obstructions by Texas, the United States, and Mexico, of the <i>reality </i>of Nde' Aboriginal Title-- to more than 6.5 million acres is at stake.&nbsp; "We are fundamentally talking about a Lipan Apache home land and self-determination understood in a radically different model than the normative U.S. paradigm of so-called 'recognized Tribes' as demi-sovereign wards with diminished 'minority' rights."</b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>According to Tamez, the mandate which arose from the El Calaboz 2011 summit is a significant assertion by Indigenous Peoples of the Texas-Mexico border region to establish an alternative justice space which can coordinate an international effort to interrogate historical truth and memory from the unique perspectives of Indigenous Peoples in the Texas-Mexico region.&nbsp; Tamez will be researching the Truth Commission as a legal instrument to implement the rights of victims of wide-scale human rights violations.&nbsp; In Barcelona, Spain, Tamez will&nbsp; learn how and why truth commissions have emerged as accountability mechanisms, and assess their potentials and limitations.&nbsp; The course balances academic reflection with concrete considerations relevant to practitioners.&nbsp; On the practical side, Tamez will be learning political and practical challenges around the design, implementation, and follow-up of a truth commission.</b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Tamez feels very certain that if a Truth Commission is coordinated from its earliest initiatives by, with, for, and alongside Indigenous Peoples there is a greater chance for it to be effective at infusing each step of the process with and through Indigenous methodologies and the 4Rs.&nbsp; "A Truth Commission on the Texas-Mexico border will contribute substantially to being a mechanism of lasting peace and empowerment for the region's Indigenous peoples and broader implications for improving society.&nbsp; It could lay down foundations for building capacity to transform normative institutions for the betterment of all humanity, biodiversity, and the Earth.</b></span><br /><br /><br />WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-31357866228081790712012-08-09T09:45:00.000-07:002012-08-09T09:45:38.863-07:00INTERNATIONAL DAY OF THE WORLD'S INDIGENOUS PEOPLESSSSS<div style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;">Why People<b>sssss?</b></div><div style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;">Indigenous Peoplessssss is an acknowledgement, in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that Indigenous Peoples have inherent collective rights to self-determination, sovereignty, with lands, territories and resources.</div><div style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><i>Now</i>... an important message from <a href="http://www.cs.org/" target="_blank">CULTURAL SURVIVAL</a></div><div style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="color: #0c343d; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;">Today is International Day of the World's Indigenous People<b>ssssss</b></div><div style="color: #0c343d; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="color: #0c343d; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">August 9 was first proclaimed International Day of the World's Indigenous People by the United Nations in 1994 to promote and protect the rights of the world's Indigenous population. This day also commemorates the achievements and contributions that Indigenous people make in the world. Today also marks the first time the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations met in Geneva in 1982.<br /></span></div><div style="color: #0c343d; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #0c343d; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">The focus of this year's International Day is <strong>"Indigenous Media, Empowering Indigenous Voices." </strong>The theme aims to highlight the importance of Indigenous media in challenging stereotypes, forging Indigenous peoples' identities, communicating with the outside world, and influencing the social and political agenda.</div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span style="color: maroon; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 14pt;">5 things you can do to celebrate International Day of the World's Indigenous People</span></b><span style="color: maroon; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 14pt;"></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">People around the world are encouraged to participate in observing the day to spread the UN's message on Indigenous Peoples. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><strong><span style="color: maroon; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 14pt;"></span></strong><a href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001JqHK9hLOT_dF2j77C5IqWzpqdVcbbQmdRQty-xi20AuTJYi7dNWGQdVdHzhrcoXGnjVt1OeRLDZruFOdOIySKyjonIY8I96vyURWlMxPfIzWJ_YRwguP0r62XcbaoERrdVI5gfjG8DC2G4cDpG3iGg==" target="&quot;_blank&quot;"><img align="left" border="0" height="136" hspace="10" name="ACCOUNT.IMAGE.360" src="http://ih.constantcontact.com/fs091/1101748879238/img/360.jpg" vspace="10" width="140" /></a><b><span style="color: maroon; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b><strong><span style="color: maroon; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 14pt;">1.&nbsp;</span></strong><span style="color: maroon; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><strong><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Raise Awareness about Endangered Indigenous Languages.</span></strong><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #001a81; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;"><a href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001JqHK9hLOT_cZHhGJ_hckjL5FYODSIOaSBXNjltTmOuz6mzLn5ybSB5u_x6zfV0oUThN2n7wpir0nUWbFnJh6Ph-Yefsn_ESq_3t9LxXHnld086NQUhlcAlVkSAIAJJRn6r6LncODEAQ=" shape="rect" target="_blank"><span style="color: #001a81;">Send an ePostcard Audio Greeting.</span></a> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Engage your friends and family and raise awareness about endangered languages by sending an e-postcard with a Native language audio greeting. &nbsp;</span><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><strong><span style="color: maroon; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 14pt;"></span></strong><a href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001JqHK9hLOT_fXS0HKrzAdTky2-myXemQsVEYXr9nSr1IUzdxZVU2hhbU42BBu4ExEOfgRVQGceQyE4RG0-P3KOvDeLSUyZSQKlVI6SI3G0tXUqIVTwL17sZhC7jH7JZHs4fZZlzIrTuEBx-5wpm6hkxToU-p00nk1qNatmdxEGR1gVLmKeTEivnwUKSLA6LZvhEwgIeaudh56icaSJ3ifSGcqEBRw57nna9knFITZjlyNuPG6eorjLDhSydwmZ6nu_y2SALhHFl0=" target="&quot;_blank&quot;"><img align="left" border="0" height="140" hspace="10" src="http://www.culturalsurvival.org/files/styles/secondary_images/public/images/clearing_forest_fabe_june_2011.jpg" vspace="10" width="140" /></a><b><span style="color: maroon; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b><strong><span style="color: maroon; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 14pt;">2.</span></strong><strong><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;">&nbsp; </span></strong><b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Make Your Voice Heard about Indigenous Peoples' Rights.</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">&nbsp;</span><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><img align="left" border="0" height="140" hspace="10" src="http://social.un.org/index/Portals/0/indigenous/picts/unpfii_logo.jpg" vspace="10" width="140" /><strong><span style="color: maroon; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 14pt;">3.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></strong><strong><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Watch a Live Webcast of the International Day Celebration at the UN Headquarters in NY. 2:30pm - 6:00pm EST.</span></strong><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;">&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">This<a href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001JqHK9hLOT_d8Ka6m-pzhLc_4csjISkAvW4QM6qQ1nj0QyKQeBBQWvBYJmnQYpFRvr53a1LdWaK1vyB6zALn0e-YyPMW9xJ4iFwBGMQ_zT8qSCE17FLvCMX5sfSvv9yecaOxhVYpxFmjLBb3r79haUWqBXCWBaliyf_DBnp_lKeywR0-wxmqMt_T1cFiwHyYl4YJTg-DupKo=" shape="rect" target="_blank"><span style="color: #001a81;">special event</span></a> at UN Headquarters in New York on August 9 will feature speakers and videos of Indigenous media organizations. On Twitter, use #UNIndigenousDay for regular updates and for sending questions to panel members in the days leading up to and during the event. Watch it here: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;"><a href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001JqHK9hLOT_evNhL-J2QO67zTjF69c9p2HSzKgDO2hfu41xRc1DCSaeuAaJt7IFb35GY0txRAGI2cNbNub_m4NvV_ROCk3n5ISRsSdrZT8vY=" shape="rect" target="_blank"><span style="color: #001a81;">http://webtv.un.org/</span></a>&nbsp;</span></div><br /> <div class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="color: maroon; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 14pt;"></span></strong><a href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001JqHK9hLOT_eBVd3uUOc6ovBUJHUvPezssSZVcqBM_xrEuv1MyFwQqZ9YaOTM5hO8xPfZdB_yNPAIOgnqnSPAlFq33qdDSwW5gtxMblMAYAY2zLmZ9NM7rAZyM8zs8Z7_" target="&quot;_blank&quot;"><img align="left" border="0" height="140" hspace="10" name="ACCOUNT.IMAGE.361" src="http://ih.constantcontact.com/fs091/1101748879238/img/361.jpg" vspace="10" width="140" /></a><b><span style="color: maroon; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b><strong><span style="color: maroon; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 14pt;">4.</span></strong><strong><span style="color: maroon; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;">&nbsp; </span></strong><b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Support Cultural Survival's work with Indigenous Peoples.</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;"> <a href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001JqHK9hLOT_eBVd3uUOc6ovBUJHUvPezssSZVcqBM_xrEuv1MyFwQqZ9YaOTM5hO8xPfZdB_yNPAIOgnqnSPAlFq33qdDSwW5gtxMblMAYAY2zLmZ9NM7rAZyM8zs8Z7_" shape="rect" target="_blank"><span style="color: #001a81;">Make a gift today.</span></a> Our work is only possible because of people like you, who believe in and support our mission to partner with Indigenous Peoples to defend their lands, languages, and cultures.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><br /><br /><br /><br /> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><img align="left" border="0" height="132" hspace="10" src="http://www.culturalsurvival.org/files/images/share.jpg" vspace="10" width="139" /><strong><span style="color: maroon; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 14pt;">5.</span></strong><strong><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;">&nbsp;</span></strong><b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Spread the Word! </span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">One of the easiest and most effective things you can do is raise awareness about Indigenous Peoples. Forward, post this message on facebook, or tweet it!&nbsp;</span><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-13312920331442262902012-08-01T10:35:00.001-07:002012-08-01T11:52:42.258-07:00Media Advisory: The U.N. Secretary General Statement on the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples<br /><div align="center"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% gainsboro;"> <tbody><tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; padding: 0in;" valign="top"><br /></td><td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; padding: 0in;" valign="top"><br /></td><td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; padding: 0in;" valign="top"><br /></td><td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; padding: 0in;" valign="top"><br /></td><td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; padding: 0in;" valign="top"><br /></td><td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; padding: 0in;" valign="top"></td><td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; padding: 0in;" valign="top"></td><td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; padding: 0in;" valign="top"></td><td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; 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padding: 0in;" valign="top"></td><td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; padding: 0in;" valign="top"></td><td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; padding: 0in;" valign="top"></td><td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; padding: 0in;" valign="top"><table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable"> <tbody><tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(237, 237, 226); padding: 0in;" valign="top"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(237, 237, 226); padding: 0in;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div></td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(237, 237, 226); padding: 0in;" valign="top"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; padding: 0in;" valign="top"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(237, 233, 233); padding: 0in;" valign="top"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></td> </tr><tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(237, 237, 226); padding: 0in;" valign="top"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(237, 237, 226); padding: 0in;" valign="top"><h6 style="line-height: 15pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; page-break-after: avoid;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;">27 July 2012</span></h6><h6 style="line-height: 15pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; page-break-after: avoid;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;">UNIC/PRESS RELEASE/093-2012</span></h6><div class="MsoHeading7" style="line-height: 15pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; page-break-after: avoid; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div align="center" class="MsoHeading7" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(141, 179, 226); line-height: 15pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; page-break-after: avoid; text-align: center;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;">FROM THE UN SECRETARY-GENERAL</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15pt; text-align: justify;"><b><u><span style="font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;">International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples</span></u></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15pt; text-align: justify;"><b><i><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;">9 August</span></i></b><b><i><span style="font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;">&nbsp;2012</span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><h3 style="line-height: 15pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; page-break-after: avoid; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #0099cc; font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;">Message of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon</span></h3><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;">In the five years since the adoption of the <a href="http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf">United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,</a> communities and individuals have been taking advantage of the reach of traditional and new media to tell their story and make their voices heard.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;">The focus of this year’s International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples is&nbsp;<b><i>"Indigenous Media, Empowering Indigenous Voices".</i></b>&nbsp; From community radio and television to feature films and documentaries, from video art and newspapers to the internet and social media, indigenous peoples are using these powerful tools to challenge mainstream narratives, bring human rights violations to international attention and forge global solidarity.&nbsp; They are also developing their own media to reflect indigenous values and fight against myths and misconceptions.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;">Indigenous voices are recounting compelling stories of how they are combating centuries of injustice and discrimination, and advocating for the resources and rights that will preserve their cultures, languages, spirituality and traditions.&nbsp; They offer an alternative perspective on development models that exclude the indigenous experience.&nbsp; They promote the mutual respect and intercultural understanding that is a precondition for a society without poverty and prejudice.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;">On this International Day, I pledge the full support of the UN system to cooperate with indigenous peoples, including their media, to promote the full implementation of the Declaration.&nbsp; I also call on Member States and the mainstream media to create and maintain opportunities for indigenous peoples to articulate their perspectives, priorities and aspirations.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;">Let us use the media – indigenous and non-indigenous, and especially new outlets – to create bridges and establish a truly intercultural world, where diversity is celebrated; a world where different cultures not only coexist but value each other for their contributions and potential.</span></div></td> <td style="padding: 0in;" valign="top"><br /></td> <td style="padding: 0in;" valign="top"><br /></td> <td style="padding: 0in;" valign="top"><br /></td> </tr></tbody></table></td> </tr></tbody></table></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 8.5pt;"><span style="color: #919191; font-size: 12pt;">For original post, click <a href="http://www.un.org/en/events/indigenousday/">here.</a></span></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div align="center"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% gainsboro;"> <tbody><tr> <td style="padding: 0in;"><br /></td> </tr></tbody></table></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-64465692005502150832012-07-04T15:26:00.002-07:002012-07-04T15:26:46.033-07:00Nde' Professor to Present Research at United Nations in Geneva<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LSsJil9VTCA/T_TCyJOHMBI/AAAAAAAAAb8/AZLfJd55oRM/s1600/EAGLE+AND+CONDOR+UTAUSTIN+2012+APRIL-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="232" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LSsJil9VTCA/T_TCyJOHMBI/AAAAAAAAAb8/AZLfJd55oRM/s320/EAGLE+AND+CONDOR+UTAUSTIN+2012+APRIL-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>&nbsp; <br /><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://news.ok.ubc.ca/2012/07/03/ubc-professors-research-requested-by-un-human-rights-council/" target="_blank">UBC professor</a> seeks to provide the United Nations 5th Session on the Effective Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples the perspectives of Texas border Indigenous peoples on U.S. border militarization and dispossession.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Margo Tamez has been invited by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to present research findings on the impacts of militarization on Indigenous peoples, their lands and territories on international borders.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">An assistant professor of Indigenous Studies and Gender-Women's Studies in the Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences at UBC's Okanagan campus, Tamez will present during the 5th&nbsp;Session of the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP), held July 9 to 13 in Geneva, Switzerland. EMRIP provides the Human Rights Council with thematic advice, in the form of studies and research, on the rights of Indigenous peoples.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">"Being selected to participate is an enormous honour," says Tamez. "It comes with a significant responsibility to uphold the principles of Indigenous elders, women, families, youth and workers in regions of North America which have been brutally marginalized in U.S. domestic policy decisions related to border security."</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In May, Tamez and research collaborator Ariel Dulitzky, clinical professor of law and director of the Human Rights Clinic at the University of Texas, submitted a study to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) related to human rights violations impacting Indigenous peoples on the Texas-Mexico border in connection with the U.S. border wall.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Tamez plans to inform the EMRIP of this ground-breaking study, which highlights the severity of the detrimental social, economic, and political impacts of border militarization and Indigenous land dispossession directly tied to the construction of the Texas-Mexico border wall across the lands of the&nbsp; Kickapoo, Tigua, and Lipan Apache Indigenous communities.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The 5th&nbsp;Session of EMRIP will bring together representatives from states, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Peoples’ organizations, civil society, inter-governmental organizations and academia. High on the agenda is the global importance of the implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples at the country level within nation-states and a knowledge exchange about the challenges Indigenous peoples face in achieving this internationally recognized goal.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">"I am thrilled to have the chance to work in collaboration with some of the world’s top experts and innovators in Indigenous rights and social movements," says Tamez.&nbsp; "I look forward to learning more about high-level UN internal mechanisms, as well as gaining deeper understandings of Indigenous women’s roles as researchers, community advocates and international diplomats."</span></div>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-58632003873451757222012-05-29T12:45:00.000-07:002012-05-30T09:42:07.296-07:00FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Indigenous leaders and faculty of the Human Rights Clinic, School of Law, University of Texas at Austin and Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia Okanagan will give public statements and discuss the international and Indigenous law analysis of the Texas-Mexico Border Wall<br /><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #4a442a;">&nbsp;FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE</span></b></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #4a442a;">(en Ingles y Espanol) </span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #4a442a;">Media Advisory</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #4a442a;">May 29, 2012</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #4a442a;">Indigenous leaders and faculty of the Human Rights Clinic, School of Law, University of Texas at Austin and &nbsp;Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia Okanagan will give public statements and discuss the international and Indigenous law analysis of the Texas-Mexico Border Wall under the Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedures of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (80<sup>th</sup> Session).</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #4a442a;">Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada</span></b><span style="color: #4a442a;">— UBC Okanagan Indigenous Studies professor, Dr. Margo Tamez will host an international telephonic press conference and will be joined by Indigenous leaders from the Texas-Mexico border region and Professor Ariel Dulitzky, Director of the Human Rights Clinic, School of Law, University of Texas at Austin on <b>Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at 10:00 PST.</b>&nbsp; The group will discuss the 9-month long collaborative study of the Texas-Mexico border wall from the international human rights and Indigenous rights principles and the submission of the legal brief to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (80<sup>th</sup> Session).&nbsp; On May 10, 2012, Tamez and Dulitzky submitted their 134-page legal analysis of the Texas-Mexico border wall to the UN CERD, calling for international intervention due to the border wall’s severe discriminatory impacts upon Native Americans, Native Mexican Americans, Indigenous Peoples and poor Latinos. &nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #4a442a;">What</span></b><span style="color: #4a442a;">:&nbsp; Indigenous leaders and law and Indigenous Studies faculty to speak about UN CERD submission on Texas-Mexico Border Wall</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #4a442a;">When</span></b><span style="color: #4a442a;">:&nbsp; May 30, 2012, 10:00 a.m.-11:45 a.m. PST</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #4a442a;">Where</span></b><span style="color: #4a442a;">:&nbsp; Telephonic </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #4a442a;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Dial in #: 1-877-807-8664, x 78664</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #4a442a;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Participant Code: 0155788 </span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #4a442a;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span><span style="color: #4a442a;">Only 26 phone lines will be provided on a first-come, first-serve basis.&nbsp; </span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #4a442a;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span><span style="color: #4a442a;">Members of the press are <b><i>strongly advised</i></b> to dial in promptly at 10:00 PST. for the 15-minute, pre-press conference instructions and introductions.</span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #4a442a;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span><span style="color: #4a442a;">The press-conference service will conclude promptly at 12:00 noon PST.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #4a442a;">Why</span></b><span style="color: #4a442a;">:&nbsp; To inform and educate the public about the human rights, international law and Indigenous legal principles relative to the Texas-Mexico border wall.&nbsp; To invite open discussion about the severe harms suffered by Indigenous and poor Latino peoples as a direct consequence of the United States’ border wall policy and its negative human, cultural, ecological, and economic impacts.&nbsp; To illuminate the myriad ways that harms are dominantly shouldered by Indigenous and poor Latino peoples without redress, remedy or restitution and contradicts the principles of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and international law. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #4a442a;">For more information contact (in English) Dr. Margo Tamez at 250-807-9837 or <a href="mailto:margo.tamez@ubc.ca">margo.tamez@ubc.ca</a>&nbsp;or</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #4a442a;">(en Español) Ms. Laura Rivas at <a href="mailto:lrivas@nnirr.org">lrivas@nnirr.org</a>510-465-1984, Ext 304, or 510-282-2500.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #4a442a;">&nbsp;</span></span> </div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="ES-MX" style="color: #4a442a;">PARA DIFUSIÓN INMEDIATA&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="ES-MX" style="color: #4a442a;">ALERTA DE PRENSA&nbsp; </span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span lang="ES-MX" style="color: #4a442a; font-size: large;">29 de Mayo de 2012</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a;">Líderes Indígenas y profesores de Derechos humanos y estudios indígenas harán declaraciones púbicas y discutirán el análisis desde el derecho internacional y de los derechos de los pueblos indígenas del muro entre Texas y México que recientemente presentaron al Comité&nbsp; para la Eliminación de la Discriminación Racial de las Naciones Unidas. </span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a;">Kelowna, British Columbia, Canadá</span></b><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2469663350484227523" name="_GoBack"></a></span><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a; font-size: large;">— La profesora, Dra. Margo Tamez UBC Okanagan Indigenous Studies realizará una conferencia de prensa telefónica internacional con la participación de líderes indígenas de la región fronteriza entre Texas y México y el Profesor Ariel Dulitzky, Director de la Clínica de Derechos Humanos Human Rights de la University of Texas at Austin el Miércoles 30 de Mayo de 2010 a las 10:00 PST.&nbsp; El grupo discutirá el estudio que por 9 meses realizaron de manera colaborativa sobre el muro entre Texas y México desde la perspectiva de los Derechos humanos y los Derechos indígenas. El 10 de Mayo de 2012, Tamez y Dulitzky presentaron sus 134-páginas de análisis legal sobre el muro y su severo impacto discriminatorio sobre los pueblos indígenas, pueblos indígenas Americanos-Mexicanos y sobre Latinos pobres al <b>Comité&nbsp; para la Eliminación de la Discriminación Racial de las Naciones Unidas</b> (UN CERD).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a;">Qué</span></b></span><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a; font-size: large;">:&nbsp;Líderes Indígenas y profesores de Derecho y de Estudios Indígenas discutirán sobre la presentación al <b>Comité&nbsp; para la Eliminación de la Discriminación Racial de las Naciones Unidas</b>&nbsp; sobre el muro entre Texas-México</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a;">Cuándo</span></b></span><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a; font-size: large;">:&nbsp;30 de Mayo de 2012, 10:00 a.m.-11:45 a.m. PST</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a;">Dónde</span></b></span><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a; font-size: large;">:&nbsp;Telefónica </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a; font-size: large;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Marcar #: 1-877-807-8664, x 78664</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a; font-size: large;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Código de Participante: 0155788 </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a; font-size: large;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a; font-size: large;">&nbsp;Solo 26 líneas telefónicas estarán disponibles de acuerdo al orden de llamada. </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a; font-size: large;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a; font-size: large;">Miembros de la prensa: se recomienda especialmente marcar a las 10:00 PST. En punto para&nbsp; 15-minutos de instrucciones y presentaciones previas a la conferencia de prensa. </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a; font-size: large;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a; font-size: large;">Los servicios de la conferencia de prensa terminarán puntualmente a las 12:00 PST.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a;">Por qué</span></b></span><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a; font-size: large;">:&nbsp;Para informar y educar al público sobre los principios de Derechos humanos, Derecho internacional y Derechos indígenas relativos al muro entre Texas y México. Invitar a una discusión abierta sobre los severos daños que los indígenas y latinos pobres sufren como consecuencia directa de la negativa de Estados Unidos de considerar las consecuencias negativas del impacto humano, cultural, ecológico y económico del muro. Exponer las múltiples formas en que estos daños son sufridos principalmente por indígenas y latinos sin ningún tipo de reparación, remedio o restitución en violación de la Declaración de Naciones unidas sobre Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas y del derecho internacional. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a; font-size: large;">Para mayor información contactar (en ingles) a la Dra. Margo Tamez al 250-807-9837 o </span><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="mailto:margo.tamez@ubc.ca"><span lang="ES-AR">margo.tamez@ubc.ca</span></a></span><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a; font-size: large;"> &nbsp;or</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a; font-size: large;">(en Español) Ms. Laura Rivas at </span><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="mailto:lrivas@nnirr.org"><span lang="ES-AR">lrivas@nnirr.org</span></a></span><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: #4a442a; font-size: large;"> 510-465-1984, Ext 304, o 510-282-2500.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">See also, <a href="http://www.nnirr.org/drupal/borderwalltouncerd" target="_blank">NNIRR post</a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-68435754664545706872012-05-25T19:15:00.001-07:002012-05-25T22:51:21.060-07:00INDIAN COUNTRY TODAY: 'Early Warning/Urgent Action' Sought Against US Human Rights Violations at Border Wall<a href="http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/05/24/early-warning-urgent-action-sought-against-us-human-rights-violations-at-border-wall-114486" target="_blank"><br /></a><br /><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dR5s677lRuk/T8A77Tqo4uI/AAAAAAAAAbg/GYJ_MzznbNc/s1600/WALL_MTAMEZ_ELCALABOZ_2011JUNE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dR5s677lRuk/T8A77Tqo4uI/AAAAAAAAAbg/GYJ_MzznbNc/s320/WALL_MTAMEZ_ELCALABOZ_2011JUNE.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iUZ_WuFCdo8/T8A8GMlx4II/AAAAAAAAAbo/m7jRnDwSKKo/s1600/MILITARIZATION_DRONE_TX_BORDER_Orbiter_MUAV_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iUZ_WuFCdo8/T8A8GMlx4II/AAAAAAAAAbo/m7jRnDwSKKo/s320/MILITARIZATION_DRONE_TX_BORDER_Orbiter_MUAV_1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-35l1Znue8q4/T8A8dkH2G8I/AAAAAAAAAbw/k_ME_k2YNwM/s1600/MAURA.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-35l1Znue8q4/T8A8dkH2G8I/AAAAAAAAAbw/k_ME_k2YNwM/s400/MAURA.bmp" width="299" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">By Gale Courey Toensing (May 24, 2012), <a href="http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/05/24/early-warning-urgent-action-sought-against-us-human-rights-violations-at-border-wall-114486" target="_blank"><b>INDIAN COUNTRY TODAY</b></a></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">A group representing human, indigenous and women’s rights accuses the United States of violating international human rights laws and private property rights in constructing the security wall along the Mexican border and has asked the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) for help to stop the violations.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ariel Dulizky, director of the Human Rights Clinic, School of Law, University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Margo Tamez (Lipan Apache) on the faculty of the <a href="http://www.ubc.ca/okanagan/ccgs/faculty/tamez.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">University of British Columbia Okanagan</a> teaching Indigenous Studies, and the <a href="http://lipanapachecommunitydefense.blogspot.ca/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lipan Apache Women Defense</a>, an Indigenous Peoples organization, submitted a request May 10 asking CERD to intervene to stop the continuing “negative impact” of the border wall. “The construction of the wall occurred in a discriminatory manner, and continues to have discriminatory effects. The intervention of the CERD, utilizing its <a href="http://search.ohchr.org/search?q=Early+Warning+and+Urgent+Action&amp;spell=1&amp;ie=utf8&amp;output=xml_no_dtd&amp;client=en_frontend&amp;proxystylesheet=en_frontend&amp;site=default_collection&amp;access=p" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Early Warning and Urgent Action</a> procedures, is necessary to stop the harm that the border wall is continuing to inflict on indigenous communities and poor Latinos,” Tamez and Dulitzky write.</span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /><a href="http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/05/24/early-warning-urgent-action-sought-against-us-human-rights-violations-at-border-wall-114486" target="_blank"><i>Read more</i></a>, Indian Country Today</span></div></div>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-58818868780953117162012-05-21T11:48:00.001-07:002012-05-23T08:42:26.371-07:00LAW-Defense, UT School of Law Human Rights Clinic, and UBCO Professor Partner on U.N. CERD Submission | Expose Increased U.S. Human Rights Violations along Texas-Mexico Border Wall(El Calaboz, TX) On May 10, 2012, in another historic move, <a href="http://www.utexas.edu/law/clinics/humanrights/workhighlights.php" target="_blank">the Human Rights Clinic, School of Law, at the University of Texas at Austin</a>, in collaboration with <b><span style="color: #741b47;">Dr. Margo Tamez</span></b> (<a href="http://www.lipanapachebandoftexas.com/index.html" target="_blank">Lipan Apache Band of Texas</a>; Faculty of <a href="http://www.ubc.ca/okanagan/ccgs/faculty/tamez.html" target="_blank">Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia Okanagan</a>), and alongside the Lipan Apache Women Defense (LAW-Defense), submitted a request for consideration under Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedures of the <a href="http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cerd/" target="_blank">United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination</a>. <br /><br />Addressed to Ms. Grabiella Habtom, <a href="http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cerd/contact.htm" target="_blank">Secretary of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva, Switzerland</a>, the authors submitted a 134-page critical legal&nbsp;analysis of the United States’ human rights violations against Indigenous Peoples, Native Mexican Americans, and severely marginalized Latinos. In extensive detail, the brief exposes and underscores how the border wall and militarization have severely impacted all life along the Texas-Mexico border, and raises the critical perspectives of impacted peoples, several who provided affidavits, who call into question the legitimacy of the U.S. uses of controversial legislation, armed force, coercion, and eminent domain in the hostile dispossession of Indigenous peoples’ traditional lands, territories and resources. <br /><br />The group plans to host an international telephonic press conference to discuss the key issues and purpose of the legal brief, the recommendations to the U.N.CERD, hoped-for outcomes, and the need to inform and educate the public and the international legal system about the U.S. government's human rights violations against Indigenous Peoples, Native Mexican Americans, and marginalized Latino peoples who live and work along the Texas-Mexico border.<br /><br /><div style="color: #990000;"><b>See full text of the submission to U.N. CERD here:</b></div><br /><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/94332840/U-N-CERD-Texas-Mexico-Border-Wall-Request-UT-LAW-HR-CLINIC-LAWDEFENSE-MTAMEZ" style="display: block; font: 14px Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; margin: 12px auto 6px; text-decoration: underline;" title="View U.N. CERD Texas-Mexico Border Wall Request-UT LAW HR CLINIC-LAWDEFENSE-MTAMEZ on Scribd">U.N. CERD Texas-Mexico Border Wall Request-UT LAW HR CLINIC-LAWDEFENSE-MTAMEZ</a><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" data-aspect-ratio="0.772727272727273" data-auto-height="true" frameborder="0" height="600" id="doc_22708" scrolling="no" src="http://www.scribd.com/embeds/94332840/content?start_page=1&amp;view_mode=list&amp;access_key=key-1xbuxfj2udnb8wohyadc" width="100%"></iframe><br /><i><b><span style="color: #990000;">Please stay tuned for details regarding the International Press Teleconference, forthcoming.</span></b></i>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-68710017238710578832012-04-13T09:08:00.004-07:002012-04-16T19:18:12.212-07:00Texas "Strategic Military Assessment" --A Violation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mpkbCTugxhA/T4hOH7FEvhI/AAAAAAAAAbA/bPe38Y7tBZc/s1600/TEXAS+MILITARY+STRATEGY--USDHS+HOME+PAGE+PHOTO-..-sec-chds-images-special-hsdlblog--National.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mpkbCTugxhA/T4hOH7FEvhI/AAAAAAAAAbA/bPe38Y7tBZc/s400/TEXAS+MILITARY+STRATEGY--USDHS+HOME+PAGE+PHOTO-..-sec-chds-images-special-hsdlblog--National.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="color: #073763; text-align: center;"><b>&nbsp;<span style="font-size: small;">Source:&nbsp; Homeland Security Digital Library, Center for Homeland Defense &amp; Security, </span></b></div><span style="font-size: small;">https://www.hsdl.org/hslog/?q=node/6375, accessed April 13, 2012.</span><br /><br /><br />(El Calaboz Rancheria, Nde' Traditional Territory, April 13, 2012)<br />See Related article <br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="color: #073763; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>BACKGROUND and PROBLEMATIC</b></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Indigenous Peoples of El Calaboz Rancheria, whose traditional lands and territories are bifurcated by the Texas-Mexico border and by the U.S.-Mexico border wall, call upon Indigenous Peoples, the United Nations member states, President Barack Obama, the U.S. Congress, the international human rights and international law community, the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights, the U.S. National Congress of American Indians, Indigenous Nations, NGOs, human rights organizations, as well as Indigenous social organizations, and human rights defenders everywhere to join us in our call for the immediate cease of any further implementation and planning related to the "Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment."&nbsp; We call for immediate protective measures for affected Indigenous Peoples by a global community, and call for the urgent attention by the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights to support the immediate structuring of dialogues between respective Texas State representatives, the U.S. State Department, and the impacted Indigenous Peoples and their respective traditional authorities and legal representatives from both sides of the Texas-Mexico international boundary region.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The <a href="http://mccaul.house.gov/uploads/Final%20Report-Texas%20Border%20Security.pdf" target="_blank">assessment report</a>, which cost the tax paying public approximately <a href="http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_20386430" target="_blank">$80,000</a>, and commissioned by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEuPFckt6_o" target="_blank">Texas State Agriculture Commissioner, Todd Staples and the South Texas Property Rights Association</a>, and given administrative approval by the <a href="https://www.hsdl.org/hslog/?q=node/6375" target="_blank">U.S. Department of Homeland Security</a>, was driven by a contract made with General Barry McCaffrey and General Robert Scales to develop the rationale and architecture, providing a scope and implementation plan for fast-tracking "a military-style strategy and operational and tactical requirements to secure the Texas portion of the U.S.-Mexico border."&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The lack of meaningful participation, consultation, Free Prior and Informed Consent, and the exclusion of directly affected Indigenous Peoples in the knowledge of and decision-making in such a serious matter is a major concern.&nbsp; This issue directly affects Indigenous Peoples' safety, health, futures, and the well-being of Indigenous Peoples' lands, territories, and resources.&nbsp; The </span><span style="font-size: large;">"Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment"</span><span style="font-size: large;">, <i>stands as a serious threat to all life in the region</i>, and poses a blatant disregard and disrespect for the Aboriginal rights of Nde' peoples, which is a serious violation of international law and the traditional authority of Indigenous Peoples.&nbsp; </span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/PEuPFckt6_o" width="560"></iframe></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The plan and implementation of military procedures, actions in Indigenous Peoples' traditional lands and territories, by the State of Texas and by any of its agencies, and the planning and implementation of increased militarization of the Texas-Mexico border without addressing <a href="http://unsr.jamesanaya.org/docs/presentations/2011-unsr-jamesanaya-wipo-9may.pdf" target="_blank"><i><b>the collective rights</b></i></a> of Indigenous Peoples is a violation of the United Nations <a href="http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf" target="_blank"><i>Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.</i></a>&nbsp;</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Specifically, the assessment and planning report, commissioned by Todd Staples, enacted by General Barry McCaffrey and General Robert Scales,&nbsp; developed with the participation and decision-making of the South Texas Property Rights Association, and using Texas public funds, violates the following <a href="http://social.un.org/index/IndigenousPeoples/DeclarationontheRightsofIndigenousPeoples.aspx" target="_blank">UNDRIP</a> articles:</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Article 30<br />1. Military activities shall not take place in the lands or territories<br />of indigenous peoples, unless justified by a relevant public interest or<br />otherwise freely agreed with or requested by the indigenous peoples<br />concerned.<br />2. States shall undertake effective consultations with the indigenous<br />peoples concerned, through appropriate procedures and in<br />particular through their representative institutions, prior to using<br />their lands or territories for military activities.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Article 36<br />1. Indigenous peoples, in particular those divided by international<br />borders, have the right to maintain and develop contacts, relations<br />and cooperation, including activities for spiritual, cultural, political,<br />economic and social purposes, with their own members as well as<br />other peoples across borders.<br />2. States, in consultation and cooperation with indigenous peoples,<br />shall take effective measures to facilitate the exercise and ensure<br />the implementation of this right.</span><br /><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Article 18<br />Indigenous peoples have the right to participate in decision-making<br />in matters which would affect their rights, through representatives<br />chosen by themselves in accordance with their own procedures,<br />as well as to maintain and develop their own indigenous decisionmaking<br />institutions.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Article 19<br />States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous<br />peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in<br />order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting<br />and implementing legislative or administrative measures that<br />may affect them.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Article 24<br />1. Indigenous peoples have the right to their traditional medicines<br />and to maintain their health practices, including the conservation of<br />their vital medicinal plants, animals and minerals. Indigenous individuals<br />also have the right to access, without any discrimination, to<br />all social and health services.<br />2. Indigenous individuals have an equal right to the enjoyment of<br />the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. States<br />shall take the necessary steps with a view to achieving progressively<br />the full realization of this right.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Article 26<br />1. Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and<br />resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise<br />used or acquired.<br />2. Indigenous peoples have the right to own, use, develop and<br />control the lands, territories and resources that they possess by reason<br />of traditional ownership or other traditional occupation or use,<br />as well as those which they have otherwise acquired.<br />3. States shall give legal recognition and protection to these lands,<br />territories and resources. Such recognition shall be conducted with<br />due respect to the customs, traditions and land tenure systems of the<br />indigenous peoples concerned.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Article 27<br />States shall establish and implement, in conjunction with indigenous<br />peoples concerned, a fair, independent, impartial, open and<br />transparent process, giving due recognition to indigenous peoples’<br />laws, traditions, customs and land tenure systems, to recognize and<br />adjudicate the rights of indigenous peoples pertaining to their lands,<br />territories and resources, including those which were traditionally<br />owned or otherwise occupied or used. Indigenous peoples shall have<br />the right to participate in this process.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Article 32<br />1. Indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop<br />priorities and strategies for the development or use of their lands or<br />territories and other resources.<br />2. States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous<br />peoples concerned through their own representative institutions<br />in order to obtain their free and informed consent prior to the<br />approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other<br />resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilization<br />or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources.<br />3. States shall provide effective mechanisms for just and fair redress<br />for any such activities, and appropriate measures shall be taken to<br />mitigate adverse environmental, economic, social, cultural or spiritual<br />impact.</span><br /><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #073763; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>PRESIDENT OBAMA AND THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT ENDORSE THE UNITED NATIONS DECLARATION ON THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES</b></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;">The United States endorsed the <a href="http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf" target="_blank">United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples</a></span><br /><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">&nbsp;on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMv2xiqaWYc" target="_blank">December 17, 2010</a>.&nbsp; However, the UNDRIP has had nominal affect on U.S. and U.S. states' policies of the use of armed force in the traditional territories and lands of Indigenous peoples.&nbsp; Indigenous peoples who experience the heavy impacts of militarization within the U.S. have been vocal and critical.&nbsp; Since 1994, the continued and controversial use of military forces against Indigenous peoples within the U.S. borders has had violent consequences in the Texas border Jumano Apache community of Redford, where <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esequiel_Hern%C3%A1ndez_Jr" target="_blank">Ezequiel Hernandez</a> was executed by a U.S. marine, and in the Nde' ('Lipan Apache') community of El Calaboz, where a staunch anti-border wall movement holds to the position of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_title" target="_blank">Aboriginal title </a>underlying U.S. and Mexican national sovereignty claims to the land and resources.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">On May 2002, in a United Nations communique entitled, "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarization" target="_blank">Militarization </a>of Indigenous Areas a Growing threat, Permanent Forum Told," the perspectives of Indigenous Peoples relayed crucial information relative to the relationship between militarization and economic development of elite social classes, who themselves benefit from a history of the dispossession wars against local Indigenous Peoples.&nbsp; The intimate weaving between militarization, the economy, and special interest groups contributes to militarization as "a root cause of many forms of human rights violations."&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">The ongoing use of militarization to uphold the economic well-being of powerful interest groups is a growing trend viewed by Indigenous Peoples to be deeply enmeshed in the settler state and settler nation which have long histories in legitimizing dispossession, displacement, and systemic violence in Indigenous lands by and through the use of the military.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Since 2002, the U.N. Permanent Forum delegates have consistently submitted interventions calling upon the U.N. to "consult affected indigenous peoples' request United Nations agencies to ensure that funds allocated for development are not used for military activities; and recommend the appointment of a Special Rapporteur on militarization in indigenous areas" <a href="http://www.un.org/rights/indigenous/hr4601.doc.htm" target="_blank">(HR/4601, May 2002)</a>.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="color: #073763;">MILITARIZATION </b></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="Default" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;">Militarization as a structure both engenders and spatializes racist-sexualized and sexist-racialized violence, and thereby works hand-in-glove with the settler economic and political occupation of Indigenous place.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Cynthia Enloe argues militarization is never gender neutral and is “a step-by-step process by which a person or a thing gradually comes to be controlled by the military or comes to depend for its well-being on militaristic ideas...and involves cultural as well as institutional, ideological, and economic transformations” (Enloe 2000:3).&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Catherine Lutz argues militarization is connected to “militant nationalisms and fundamentalisms... to the less visible deformation of human potentials into the hierarchies of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and to the shaping of national histories in ways that glorify and legitimate military action” (Lutz 2002:723).&nbsp; Ndé memory and Oral Tradition today narrate heretofore negated aspects of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarism" target="_blank">militarism </a>and militarization on the repression of Indigeneity and Knowledge.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">During Lipan Apache Women Defense's ongoing work alongside Nde' peoples, we have listened and engaged in crucial dialogues with Elders, women, youth, men, families and Chiefly peoples who have raised critical questions about the serious relationship between historical and contemporary uses of force against Ndé and related Indigenous Peoples of the Texas-Mexico border region.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">A working group of Nde' leaders are researching how current-day militarization of the Nde' traditional lands and territories is part of a larger social, historical, economic and political process to colonize, dispossess and assimilate Indigenous Peoples through use of force, coercion, and domination.&nbsp; Currently, Nde' peoples are examining how current-day dispossession is tied to historical legal constructs rooted in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_Discovery" target="_blank">Doctrine of Discovery</a>.&nbsp; This line of inquiry is a concern to Indigenous legal scholars as well (<a href="https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?action=DocumentDisplay&amp;crawlid=1&amp;doctype=cite&amp;docid=28+Pace+Envtl.+L.+Rev.+339&amp;srctype=smi&amp;srcid=3B15&amp;key=d2d55963395ee7319cbfecabcf994872" target="_blank">Frichner 2010</a>; <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=721631" target="_blank">Miller 2005</a>).&nbsp;</span></div><div class="Default" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="color: #073763;">INDIGENOUS PEOPLES' STRUGGLES AGAINST SYSTEMATIZED MILITARY VIOLENCE</b></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">On September 12, 2003, the international representatives of Indigenous Peoples convened in Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico, articulated the intricate relationships between powerful interest groups in local arenas of power, transnational economic development, and militarization.&nbsp; The International Cancun Declaration of Indigenous Peoples stated, "the militarization of Indigenous Peoples' lands and territories, and the many cases of assassination and arbitrary arrests and detention of Indigenous activists and leaders and people who are supporting them, as well as the criminalization of Indigenous Peoples' resistance, all significantly increased..." It is important to note these processes unfold within the nexus of a powerful matrix of domination dominantly exercised by and through complex relationships forged between powerful local interest groups, politicians, local authorities, national elected leadership, transnational organizations and institutions, and transnational corporations--across international boundaries.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="color: #073763;">LIPAN APACHE WOMEN DEFENSE AT THE UNITED NATIONS STAND AGAINST MILITARIZATION OF NDE' TRADITIONAL TERRITORIES AND LANDS</b></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In May 2009, at the&nbsp; U.N. Permanent Forum, Eight Session, the Lipan Apache Women Defense (LAW-Defense) submitted <a href="http://lipanapachecommunitydefense.blogspot.ca/2009/05/lipan-apache-women-defense-intervention.html" target="_blank">an intervention</a> to Agenda Item 4, entitled "Human Rights, Indigenous Peoples, Militarization and the Texas-Mexico Border Wall."&nbsp; In this statement delivered to the United Nations, Nde' Peoples' concerns and perspectives, related to the increasing scales of militarization on and in the Nde' traditional lands and territories, were put before UNPFII Indigenous delegates, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and U.N. member states.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">At that time, the Lipan Apache Women Defense provided details of the destructive effects on Indigenous Peoples social organization, traditional knowledge, families, lands, water, and cultural resources.&nbsp; At that time, LAW-Defense provided evidence of the level of impunity in which local, regional, state, and national actors, organizations, and systems were dismantling Indigenous land-based social and economic forms of inherent belonging with Nde' traditional lands and territories.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="color: #073763;">TEXAS-MEXICO BORDER--THE 'NEW' 'INDIAN WAR'</b></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The settler society in South Texas and on the Texas-Mexico border has historically and persistently used racial, religious, economic, and cultural assimilation as tools of colonization and domination.&nbsp; This fact is made explicit in traditional Texas historical narratives, in Texas road-side 'history', in Texas popular culture, and in the Texas Creation Myth ('TCM').&nbsp; Brian DeLay has analyzed the TCM as comprised of the following components:</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>"This story, which we can call the Texas Creation Myth, was retold and refined in books, articles, and pamphlets published in cities across the U.S. Texan ambassadors to the United States chanted the Creation Myth like a mantra, and sympathetic U.S. politicians soon knew it by heart.<sup><a href="http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/112.1/delay.html#FOOT35" name="REF35">35</a></sup> The myth contained three basic components: First, Texas had been a wasteland before Anglo-American colonists arrived, because the Mexicans, "either through a want of personal prowess or military skill ... were unable to repel the frequent incursions of their savage neighbors." Second, officials in Mexico invited American colonists into Texas both to redeem the wilderness from the Indians and to protect northeastern Mexico from Indian attack. Third, the Americans quickly accomplished these twin tasks. As one author put it, "the untiring perseverance of the colonists triumphed over all natural obstacles, expelled the savages by whom the country was infested, reduced the forest to cultivation, and made the desert smile." (Delay, <a href="http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/112.1/delay.html" target="_blank">"Independent Indians and the U.S.-Mexico War,"</a> para. 25, The American Historical Review.)</b></span><br /><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Since the construction of the Texas-Mexico border wall in Nde' traditional territories and lands, the increasing force of dispossession, displacement, environmental harm, threats to Indigenous knowledge--coupled with high levels of harassment, surveillance, abuse, psychological warfare, low intensity conflict measures, and impunity in the Lower Rio Grande Valley communities along the path of the border, have been well documented as being directly related to the militarization of Indigenous places.&nbsp; The increasing scales of repression exercised against Indigenous governance systems, and those who defend them, has direct correlations to deepened erosion of safety and security of Indigenous Elders, children, youth, women, men, workers, and family social structures--on the traditional territories and lands.&nbsp; For Nde' human rights defenders--aggression, surveillance, and violence has spilled over into other places where they lead their lives defending Indigenous Peoples' human rights in El Calaboz and Nde' traditional places.&nbsp; </span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-80178919596110201222012-03-29T12:37:00.002-07:002012-03-30T15:25:20.343-07:00Assimilating the Masses? Tejano History Without Indigenous Peoples<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-74pKqLOX0Jo/T3S51bYxEwI/AAAAAAAAAa4/jvf5LmmRrmQ/s1600/wheresthejustice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-74pKqLOX0Jo/T3S51bYxEwI/AAAAAAAAAa4/jvf5LmmRrmQ/s1600/wheresthejustice.jpg" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b></b></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>RESPONSE TO <a href="http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/somosaustin/entries/2012/03/28/tejano_monument_supporters_fac.html?cxntfid=blogs_somos_austin" target="_blank">"Tejano Monument Supporters Faced Questions,"</a> Austin American Statesman, March 28, 2012.</b></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">While it is important to challenge the Texas Creation Myth (Pioneer version) and its erasure of the historical, documented, and inherent relationship between Indigenous peoples and the land in Texas, (and the Tejano monument movement is a welcome interruption to&nbsp;the dominant&nbsp;project), it is also important that we challenge the rhetoric and discourses of "conquering history" (Antonia Castaneda) within the dominant construction of Tejano history.&nbsp; A rigorous engagement with multi-plural realities, multiple interest groups, the pattern of violent assimilation and the rise of a highly stratified (classed) society among Tejanos on the land needs close attention.&nbsp;&nbsp;The current-day memorialization of&nbsp; the Tejano experience offers an opportunity to re-think and re-examine&nbsp;South Texas' and the Texas-Mexico border peoples' histories&nbsp;with current-day lenses and tools.&nbsp; From an Indigenous lense, I wonder... in what ways did Indigenous peoples of mixed ancestry&nbsp;find it useful to build a coalitional land-based identity in resistance against Anglo-American cultivator-settlers?&nbsp; From an Indigenous view, the Tejano identity is an umbrella in which many Indigenous peoples with mixed ancestry have come&nbsp;underneath out from&nbsp;storms,&nbsp;and then&nbsp;left at different times in history.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">Tejano identity has been fluid, not fixed, for Indigenous peoples undergoing violent displacements and being incorporated into labor pools for the elites.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">It is important to&nbsp;look closely at&nbsp;the forces of&nbsp;assimilation among a very diverse Indigenous world along the Lower Rio Grande in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, experiencing the crushing force of assimilation and criminalization by&nbsp;settlers--the most powerful interest group.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">At different times, Tejano elites have worked alongside Indigenous resisters against Anglo-American settlement, and at&nbsp;other times Tejano elites built their&nbsp;identity and culture in competition to Anglo-American cultivators by&nbsp;the adoption of the oppressors' tools.&nbsp; Tejano elites are implicated in establishing their foothold on the land through the coerced and forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples.&nbsp; </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">We should ask: who gets to construct Tejano history today?&nbsp; Who specifically does the current version serve?&nbsp; Why is the Anglo-dominant political interest group offering concession to Tejanos now?&nbsp; What does this have to do with land development and partnerships related to oil, water,&nbsp;and uranium development in South Texas?&nbsp; And, most importantly, who does&nbsp;this model of public history&nbsp;leave out?&nbsp; </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">The Tejano monument is not&nbsp;really progressive or radical.&nbsp;Rather, it mimicks that which it purports to be challenging </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">True, the Tejano monument is a change that opens up a space in a very uniform field of historical interpretation which has, in Texas, been overly dominated (and thus, censored) by the White Anglo-Christian pioneer narrative.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">On the other hand, the current construction of Tejano public history could take on more layers with a social justice lens that includes and educates about the realities of colonialism, genocide, gender violence, racism and a racially stratified society.&nbsp; This is the version that Indigenous peoples and peoples of mixed ancestry could recognize and see themselves within.&nbsp; This is the one&nbsp;which persists in Texas.&nbsp; At the center of a Tejano history with a social justice lense would be&nbsp;the central issue of land, dispossession,&nbsp;capitalism, and that peoples who identify as Tejanos --past and present-- have had a role in the dispossession and violent impoverishment of Indigenous peoples.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">A critical human geography and critical race approach to public history could help to curb the trimmed down perspective of Tejano history that the more patriarchal, linear, and overly romantic (read: 'positive')&nbsp;versions tend to perpetuate.&nbsp; Not denying the reality of <i>multiple </i>Tejano histories, raced, classed, gendered, stratified:&nbsp; a Tejano-Tejana-Indigenous-European complex ancestry--that was and is a story of genocide denial--would be a truely valuable and humane&nbsp;contribution to contemporary Texas societies.&nbsp; </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">Further, a narrative that reflects the processes of Tejano history making--with a realistic representation of their role in colonization, and one contested by Indigenous peoples, past and present--would be a valued, cutting edge model of public history in a contemporary world. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">Unfortunately, the Tejano monument&nbsp;the public is receiving, and the media discourses surrounding its birth,&nbsp;is not cutting edge.&nbsp;&nbsp;It is more of the same, in a multicultural model that is practicing covert racism and genocide against current-day Indigenous peoples who are the land owners muted in this neoliberal&nbsp;Tejano Creation Myth--without Indigenous peoples.&nbsp; </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">When powerful interest groups within the settler society&nbsp;continue to negate the existence and presence of Indigenous peoples, upon whose lands their success is made possible, then public history becomes an issue of human rights, the right of Indigenous peoples&nbsp;to challenge racist public education poliices,&nbsp;and an issue of the mental health of the Indigenous child, woman, man, family, and community.&nbsp; Ongoing denial of Indigenous presence and realities in Texas public history is a collective health crisis for Indigenous peoples.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">It is important to re-think what 'Tejano' meant in the 18th and 19th, and&nbsp;20th&nbsp;centuries, and what this identity has evolved into in the 21st century-- as more and more Indigenous peoples in Texas act out their oppression by&nbsp;negating their Indigenous culture and to assimilate to 'Hispanic' or 'Tejano' identity.&nbsp; This&nbsp;problem of denying Indigeneity is a reflection of past and contemporary economics, politics, and authoritarian governance, and the legacy of criminalizing&nbsp;Indigenous cultures in Texas.&nbsp; Internalizing public denial and negation of Indigeneity is a public health crisis for&nbsp;Texas Indigenous communities.&nbsp;&nbsp;Challenging this covert and overt form of racism against&nbsp;the idea and reality of Indigeneity is deeply woven into&nbsp;the process of identity formation in Texas.&nbsp; Idenity and culture are key mental health issues for Indigenous peoples in Texas, and public history should reflect, respect and meaningfully engage with our Indigenous experiences and world views.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">Undoubtedly, the Tejano monument deserves a far more complex public debate with more Indigenous peoples voicing their perspectives.&nbsp; </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">One thing is certain, in the case of South Texas, few peoples can truly claim a so-called 'pure' Spanish ancestry.&nbsp; In actuality, as a result of the mission, military, mining, ranching, cultivating, and land dispossession approaches to Indigenous resistances to colonization, there was a great deal of segregating and within sites of crisis (prisons, mines, missions, presidios, ranches, agricultural fields...) the oppressed did align and rebel together.&nbsp; From anti-oppression resistances, and as a&nbsp;result of violent coercion, Indigenous peoples offered an alternative world view and experience of life to peoples undergoing violent colonization and assimilation.&nbsp; Indigenous peoples offered a different physical and spiritual reality, and thus, due to alliances across oppressed groups in South Texas and the Texas-Mexico border states, there was extensive&nbsp;inter-mixing between poor Basques, other Spanish speaking Europeans, African slaves, and a <i>majority </i>Indigenous population.&nbsp; What many Mexican-Americans, Hispanics, and yes, even Tejanos have come to believe are 'Spanish' cultural world-views, are in fact deeply owing to Lipan Apache, Jumano, Nahua, Tlaxcalteca, Coahuiltec, Comanche, and Mescalero world views and knowledege systems.&nbsp; Layered myths, transferred as a technology of negating Indigenous knowledge, doesn't add up for Lipan Apache hereditary leader, Steven Fernandez Falcon.&nbsp; Falcon challenges naming traditions among colonizers in Texas which displaces Indigenous knowledge, languages, place-names, and systems.&nbsp; Falcon argues,<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"> "</span></b></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;">The biggest myth is how Texas got it's name; I've seen it said it was Spanish, others [say] it was Caddo [word], or just an Indian word. Most do not realize it is a name of a Wichita band called the <i>TEYAS </i>who roamed in Central Texas, and their name literally translated into "ally" not "friend." So calling one self a "Tejano" is identifying yourself as a member of the Wichita and not as a Texan or Texas descendant."</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">Indigenous views contradict and puncture the romantic.&nbsp; Indigenous knowledge keepers, those like Falcon, who carry forth knowledge disseminated intergenerationally, across the majority of the counties of the lands where current-day Tejanos claim place, underscores the reality that we didn't disappear, we persisted, we are recovering, and that our memory and knowledge systems are resilient.&nbsp; Then, memory is political as well, and has legal ramifications for Indigenous peoples seeking redress, restitution, and reparation.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">Recognition to Indigenous peoples, for the all-important social survival exchanges offered to non-Indigenuos peoples in their daily interactions on our lands, in addition to the central role of economic trade, which infused Indigenous and non-Indigenous trans-cultural paths of thinking and being--is key to recovery and repair.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">Indigeneity has been deeply stitched into the non-Indigenous peoples consciousness in their every day existences.&nbsp; At the same time, violence and conflict-ridden exchanges between colonists and the colony's oppressed peoples has continued to divide current-day Tejanos and Indigenous peoples--in the&nbsp;shadows of old and new monuments laying claims to pioneering histories.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">Without doubt, Indigenous peoples, our lands, and our planned-for assimilation (into disappearance!) has always been at the foundation of all South Texas and Texas-Mexico border lands colonizing cultures.&nbsp; Indigenous peoples give shape, influence, and dynamically form alternative world views which challenge the normative version of Tejano culture.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">The silence about this core social, economic, and political reality, is a censorship about the base formation of power, domination, and subordination in the intimate relationships forged on the land in South Texas and in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">Silence on this issue, in public memory and public debates, serves to obscure and negate the current-day reality of Indigenous peoples' struggles for self-determination, Federal Recognition, autonomy, redress, restitution, and Truth Commissions on a variety of issues related to land and resources.&nbsp; </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">It is important to not reject--as does the pioneer linear narrative--the central place and role of Indigenous peoples of Texas and northeastern Mexico--especially South Texas and the Texas-Mexico border region.&nbsp; Of course, we did not vanish, did not disappear, or fully assimilate.&nbsp; Rather, we adapted to radical changes.&nbsp; As evidenced in the many Indigenous organizations working on issues of social justice and human rights, resilience and advocacy, not conquest, is the apt framework that puts pressure upon Tejano identity. &nbsp; In other words, there can be no 'settler', 'pioneer', or 'Tejano' history, memory, or memorializing <i>without </i>Indigenous peoples.&nbsp; They can't logically or rationally make a claim to their own complex history without recognizing the reality and complex history of those they invaded and occupied, who resisted them. The descendents of the pioneer colonizers can't exist without the living, direct, lineal descendants of the colonized.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">To put it another way, the living, surviving, resilient Tejanos and White-Texas Pioneers cannot make a claim to exist today <i>without </i>the living, surviving, and resilient Indigenous peoples-- upon whose blood-soaked, stolen lands the colonists built empires, communities, and economic wealth.&nbsp; Where's the benefits sharing?&nbsp; </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;">For further consideration...</span></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">Tejanos, across the centuries, also adapted to violent invasions since the infamous 19th century violent 'Texan' and 'Texian' land grabs.&nbsp; Many elite Tejanos adopted the world-views of Anglo-Americans, Liberals, and assimilationist policies of powerful interest groups.&nbsp; Tejanos&nbsp;actively articipated in colonizing, dispossessing, and marginalizing (structurally and institutionally) the landowners--Indigenous peoples.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">Let's not miss the underlying point of the important intervention offered by Dr. de la Tejas, that Texas has been “made up of a variety of people, not just the small segment that usually gets all the credit for settling Texas and for developing Texas.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">'Made up' is accurate, as it hints that we need to think more critically about the processes, often violent, which have shaped the popular and mythical inventions that have stood in as official Texas public memory and 'history', but in fact, are only distortions, and often just slivers of a much more complex and complicated past.&nbsp; </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">In that complicated past, the Indigenous reality and experience--past, present, and future--continues to get paved over within the dominant and traditional modes of telling history.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">In the traditional version of Tejano history, there is much left to the margins, such as the very significant inter-mixing between Indigenous peoples, such as Lipan Apaches, Mescalero Apaches, Coahuiltecos, Tlaxcaltecas, Nahuas, Comanches... in South Texas and the Texas-Mexico border lands, with the minority groups: Europeans.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">To deny and, or, to neglect this important and dominant story and memory within South Texas and north-eastern Mexico's experiences of 'being made up' into a republic, and the violent forces underlying the making of 'Texas', is to deny the public a truly just history.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">The colonization of Indigenous peoples--past and present-- in Texas, is an important part of the Tejano history and ongoing recovery process.&nbsp; Tejano identity is complex and diverse, not the same, and is a story that is deeply connected to the land, resources, and often, from the view of Indigenous peoples, the violent, masculine, disruption that Spanish European militarists and developers, and their Tlaxcalteca cohorts, played in the extermination wars against non-assimilating and non-conforming, non-Christianizing Indigenous peoples all across Texas.&nbsp; </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">To be truly just, it was my hope that the Tejano history memorial would not assimilate traditional, normative, and linear ways of </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">portraying colonization, imperialism, and genocide.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">However, the discourses and rhetoric surrounding this important moment, sadly, seems to be mimicking that which it purports to be challenging.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">Indigenous peoples in Texas are a dynamic interest group, and are on the path towards full self-determination, self-governance, autonomy, and recovery of our full sovereignty.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">Texas Indigenous peoples, not those who were removed to these lands after the U.S. constitution, but, rather, those whose presence here pre-dated the Spanish colonization, never ceded our lands, nor signed away our rights, nor relinquished our Aboriginal Title.&nbsp; </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">Underlying all settler historical narratives is the reality of Indigenous Proprietary Title.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">And, in the Indigenous perspective of the Tejano history, there is still much lacking in recognition, respect, and memory about the inter-weaving of Indigeneity and colonization as a core story being muffled beneath this public history.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">A key question is: <i>Where's the Justice?</i> in contemporary Tejano memory and public monument making?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4a442a; font-size: 14pt;">Ahe'he'e (thank you)</span></div>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-85088923849085217302012-03-15T08:41:00.002-07:002012-03-15T08:44:09.022-07:00THE BORDER WALL: THE LAST STAND AT MAKING THE US A WHITE GATED COMMUNITY<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">by Mark Karlin, Truthout / News Analysis</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Sunday 11 March 2012</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="content clearfix"><div class="art-body"><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>This is the first in an occasional Truthout series on viewing the US "immigration" and Mexican border policies through a social justice lens, focusing on the lower Rio Grande Valley. Brownsville, Texas, area. Mark Karlin, editor of BuzzFlash at Truthout, visited the region recently to file these reports.&nbsp; (Photos by Mark Karlin)</i></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><img alt="" src="file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/mtamez/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot-1.png" /><img alt="" src="file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/mtamez/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot.png" /></span><br /><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The physical Mexican-American wall starts as a newly fortified metal <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16164451" target="_blank">barrier extending 300 feet into the warm, balmy waters of Southern California</a> and ends up some 2,000 miles later just east of Brownsville, Texas. But it would be wrong to think of it as continuous, because only about a third of that distance has some form of visible barrier running like a scar across the US border with Mexico.</span></div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><img alt="" src="http://www.truth-out.org/files/030912-7a.jpg" /></div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The origins of the billions of dollars spent on the largely symbolic, highly visible wall really starts much farther north with US organizations and people advocating for a white political power structure, groups like one recently represented at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45755822/vp/46349036#46349087" target="_blank">contend that a multicultural society is a danger to America</a>. The wall also begins with the efforts of states like <a href="http://drcintli.blogspot.com/2012/01/tucson-schools-bans-books-by-chicano.html" target="_blank">Arizona to erase Mexican-American culture from the textbooks</a>&nbsp; in state schools, even in districts where the vast majority of students are of Mexican descent. It begins with Republicans such as Mitt Romney welcoming the endorsements of <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/01/16/404357/romney-campaigning-with-anti-immigrant-official-with-ties-to-hate-groups-on-martin-luther-king-day/" target="_blank">white nationalists who campaign at his side</a>. It starts with draconian Alabama's, Arizona's and Georgia's harsh anti-"immigrant" laws that are spreading to many state legislatures, born of racism and <a href="http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/10/npr_private_prison_industry_helped_draft_az_immigr.php" target="_blank">self-serving industry lobbies such as privatized prisons</a>.</div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The construction of the "barrier" wall - accompanying large-scale militarization (the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the FBI, the military etc.) - is on America's southern border, and there is meaning in that. Its location is prima facie evidence that the "immigration issue" is really a euphemism for keeping poor brown-skinned people out of the US - as well as creating a "practice" zone for protecting American economic and political interests in Mexico and Central America.</div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>Migration Is Not About Opportunism; It's About Survival</b></div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The overwhelming majority of migrants from Mexico who seek undocumented entrance to US are desperate, not gold diggers. They are often victims of an <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/truthout-contributor-david-bacon-his-new-book-illegal-people/1328731210" target="_blank">indigenous subsistence agricultural and rural economy that is disappearing</a>, due to NAFTA and US subsidies of American farmers, who can sell for lower competitive prices "south of the border." Often facing an arduous, dangerous trip up from southern Mexico or Central America, they are willing to confront possible death in the deserts, sometimes relying on treacherous "coyotes" (guides), who claim to offer them safe passage to the US in return for exorbitant fees, and professional criminals, who abuse and steal from them as they head to the border.</div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The strong anti-"immigration" laws of many states and the harsh enforcement of the federal government, however, may be backfiring, because migrants in dire economic need will work for very little under squalid conditions - and, therefore, are a valued "commodity." A 2011 Christian Science Monitor article notes that in Alabama, "<a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2011/1022/Anti-illegal-immigration-bill-stokes-backlash-in-Alabama-fields" target="_blank">farmers fearing a labor shortage are protesting recent immigration laws</a> they say are too harsh, forcing undocumented workers to flee to prevent deportation." The farmers say, "US workers are unwilling to endure the rigorous conditions of farm work and that" local farmers may go bankrupt. But the proponents of white American exceptionalism have no tolerance for a multicultural society, even if such a stance hurts the US agricultural (and other low-pay labor areas) financial penchant for labor exploitation.</div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><img alt="" src="http://www.truth-out.org/files/030912-7b.jpg" /></div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>Can the US Wall Off a Culturally Diverse Society?</b></div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">"It seems to me that the notion of a literal wall between Mexico and the US signifies both the physical and existential threat that many white Americans perceive from those with darker skin," Timothy Wise, an expert on how the fear of power being shared in America by its diverse population is creating racial anxiety in many whites, told Truthout. "On the one hand, there is the sense that such persons are literally going to harm us - through crime, the mythical overuse of taxpayer funded services or some other thing - and on the other, the larger paranoia that they pose a threat to the cultural and social survival of America as 'we have known it'."</div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Recently, I stood in downtown Brownsville on a sliver of land ironically called "Hope Park." I read about how ferries used to cross the narrow stretch of the Rio Grande there, making it easier for the citizens of both nations to move unimpeded from one country to another. Instead, as I looked toward Mexico, there was a high fence of vertical bars in front of me, one of the more "attractive" versions of the wall, which varies in construction design from location to location (in some places it is just corrugated sheets of metal and in others it may be three consecutive physical barriers). "Hope," the celebration of a <a href="http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/articles/border-120934-fence-park.html" target="_blank">blended heritage and opportunity, had literally been fenced off</a> from this wedge of land.</div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The border wall divides people of common culture and heritage, including not just Mexicans, but also Native Americans. Just to the west of Brownsville, is the town of El Calaboz, an indigenous community where Lipan Apache, Tlaxcalteca, Nahua, Comanche and Basque colonists have had extensive interactions since the Spanish colonial era. <a href="http://www.ubc.ca/okanagan/ccgs/faculty/tamez.html" style="color: #660000;" target="_blank"><b>Margo Tamez</b></a>, an assistant professor at the <a href="http://www.ubc.ca/okanagan/ccgs/welcome.html" style="color: #660000;" target="_blank">University of British Columbia</a> - who holds a cross-appointment in indigenous studies and gender and women's studies - grew up there, learning the history of native oppression from her <a href="http://www.lipanapachebandoftexas.com/index.html" style="color: #660000;" target="_blank"><b>Lipan Apache</b></a> elders.</div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Tamez, like Wise, views the wall as a physical symbol of oppression of peoples who are not white. Talking with Tamez, one gets a sense of the richness of her heritage and what a toll that squashing out diversity - instead of embracing it - takes. Tamez wants her lineage to be clear. She is a member of the Lipan Apache Band of Texas, or in their language, of the Konitsaaíí ndé ("Big Water Clan") and Cúelcahén ("Tall Grass People Clan"), the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipan_Apache_people" style="color: #660000;" target="_blank">southernmost of the Athabascan peoples</a>, who stretch from British Columbia to Tamaulipas and Coahuila, Mexico. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athapaskan" style="color: #660000;" target="_blank">Athabascan </a>peoples span three borders, as does their common culture.</div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Indigenous peoples along the Texas border wall were also the first peoples, according to Tamez, with whom the Spanish colonial government entered into land grants. Tamez's mother, Eloisa García Tamez (whose family was granted a plot in 1767 by Spain), is lead plaintiff in an ongoing lawsuit against the federal government claiming the wall's construction is a violation of Texas land law; Crown land grant and riparian laws; treaties among Lipan Apaches, Texas and the US; and international law.</div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><img alt="" src="http://www.truth-out.org/files/030912-7c.jpg" /></div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Tamez told Truthout that the wall is representative of the "genealogy of hate and an entrenched worldview which is based upon contempt and disdain for indigenous peoples globally. The wall represents the legacy of that particular world view - a 'deathscape' which is a means of continuing to colonize through mechanization of cages and walls at a vast scale, and which demands its own existence through indigenous peoples' containment in open air prisons in our homelands, our traditional territories." Tamez maintains a web site about the <a href="https://mysite.wsu.edu/personal/mtamez/calaboz/default.aspx" target="_blank"><span style="color: #660000;">Apache struggle for indigenous rights</span> </a>and lands in which she writes,"Apachean peoples still have a deep sense of being cloistered, imprisoned, contained, detained, and displaced in fractured ways by those visibly militarized architectural features on our territorial spaces."&nbsp;&nbsp;</div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>Lower Rio Grand Valley Is a Cage for Many</b></div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Indeed, the lower Rio Grand Valley is literally a cage for many. If you travel north by car on the only highway out of Brownsville, Route 77, after about an hour, you come to an immigration checkpoint. If you are undocumented, you will likely be apprehended here and deported, unless you have some foolproof, forged papers. If you are an American citizen (of brown skin color) and are suspected of being an "illegal alien," you may be searched and harassed. In short, without a passport or a driver's license, many residents of the lower Rio Grande Valley are trapped.</div><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><b style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">(For complete article... <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/wall-last-stand-making-us-white-gated-community/1331217858" target="_blank">click</a>).</b><br /><div class="sweet-justice" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div></div></div>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-1810789891491922502012-02-18T10:15:00.000-08:002012-02-18T10:34:16.925-08:00KEYSTONE EMINENT DOMAIN TARGETS COULD LEARN FROM INDIGNEOUS PEOPLES AND THE TEXAS-MEXICO BORDER WALL<div style="color: #20124d; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>A response to </b>"<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/texas-energy/oil-and-natural-gas/keystone-pipeline-sparks-property-rights-backlash/" target="_blank">Keystone Pipeline Sparks Property Rights Backlash</a>," 2/17/2012, The Texas Tribune.</span></div><div style="color: #20124d; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oR5v9w7pNak/Tz_l67xUPfI/AAAAAAAAAaw/fuWlxS0T8_M/s1600/PipelineCounties_1_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oR5v9w7pNak/Tz_l67xUPfI/AAAAAAAAAaw/fuWlxS0T8_M/s1600/PipelineCounties_1_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" /></a></div><div style="color: #20124d; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Source: Todd Wiseman / Jay Root, <i>The Texas Tribune</i>.</span></span></div><div style="color: #20124d; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="color: #20124d; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It is an interesting twist of irony that the Keystone is shrink-wrapped as a "security" issue... and just one hair shy of being packaged and spun as a buffer/buttress against "terrorism." Indigenous Peoples of Konitsaaii Gokiyaa ('Lipan Home Land') have extensive experience and history with this 21st century phase of a longer history of dispossession, deception, and violent domination by those seeking only to serve the interests of the few.<br /><br />It is important for those who are the targeted, as well as other critically involved actors, to consider the similar features of the discourses and rhetoric which the transnational and the state use to condemn these Texas property owners' lands, <i><b>a</b><b>nd</b></i><b> compare them</b> to the discourses and practices that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security used to condemn 70 miles of lands to construct the violent mega-project: the Border Wall on the Texas border. </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />There are important overlaps and intersections that should not be dismissed lightly, or artificially wrapped into a false rationale of "that is different because we have to protect our border against ____."&nbsp; This is a dangerous fallacy.&nbsp; The border wall could be incredibly useful analytical piece for white 'interior' property owners in this instance who are fighting a colossal battle to protect their rights and interests in land within Texas' territorial boundary, <i>in competition against</i> the desires and alleged 'rights' of a transnational, the elite U.S.-Canadian-Global 1-5% who will benefit, and the supposed "security" of the "nation." Consider the following: </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />In the case of the Texas-Mexico Border Wall, over 20 corporations have profited quite nicely on this immensely destructive project, which exploited the poverty and political marginalization of Indigenous peoples who are the original land owners, and whose title underlies and predates the U.S. and Texas for that matter.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #20124d; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="color: #20124d; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In that case, the majority of the impacted peoples hold legitimate Aboriginal Title (recognized by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples--which, btw, was endorsed by the United States last year), Crown Title, Treaties (for example, the wall infringes on the Lipan Apache Band of Texas' treaties with Spain, Mexico, Texas and the U.S.; and on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo). </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />The following statement should be critically re-examined, as it is a useful way to link the way the transnationals use the state to spin and to deploy the ax to constitutional rights beyond borders (scroll down to paragraph 8): </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />"He said the company already had 99 percent of the easements it needed for the Texas segment and was working on snapping up the remaining holdouts." </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />In 2007, 2008, and 2009, former US DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff used nearly identical discourses and rhetoric against property owners along the Texas border.&nbsp; Indigenous peoples who had clear title to their lands vis-a-vis arrangements with the Spanish Crown; Hispanic and Latino private property owners many of whom had their land grant title confirmed by the first constitutional government of Texas; white farmers (mostly Euro-American emigrants to the region) whose properties had been in their families for 304 generations--were all condemned by the Secretary for the "security" and "protection" of the "nation." </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />As a result of the vehement resistance by Texas land owners against dispossession, (across race, class, religion, vocation, and different historical paths to land ownership--and dispossession...) the Secretary invented the mega waiver. Remember that? </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />Section 102 ('mega-waiver') was the provision which instrumentally <i>voided </i>35 Federal Laws which effectively made it possible for big government to wipe out legal opposition, delay, and any possible relief to condemnation. This also obstructed the path towards remedy, redress, restitution, compensation...as well, which is one of the underlying pillars of the Lipan Apaches' 2009 petition to and hearing before the Inter-American Commission/Organization of American States--an ongoing investigation of the U.S. violations of international law and human rights conventions against Indigenous land owners.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #20124d; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="color: #20124d; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Who benefitted directly from the mega waivers and the expedited condemnations? The government contractor corporations, elected politicians, and elite private individuals whose interests they serve. They got millions expedited and into their bank accounts.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #20124d; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="color: #20124d; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Who benefitted from the construction jobs? Not locals. Other 'U.S. citizens' who the contractors imported from Other U.S. states and congressional districts, with the approval and complicity of Texas politicians. Remember, the many vehicles with <a href="http://lipanapachecommunitydefense.blogspot.com/2010/01/indigenous-elders-singled-out-for-new.html" target="_blank">Nebraska license plates</a> which suddenly appeared out of thin air in 2009 and 2010 in Cameron County, Texas? Locals testified that it was as if an invasion of non-local and dominantly white 'supervisory' labor converged upon all the LRG Valley --and were highly 'visible' in local Mexican restaurants as an obvious non-local group? </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br />&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #20124d; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The transnationals have profited quite nicely from the give-aways and gates that the majority Republicans opened for large scale dispossession in South Texas with mega-projects such as the Border Wall and the Keystone on the premise of "security." "Security" is used to rationalize the large-scale, overthrow of democratic constitutional rights--and Texas property law and ownership is the key 'test' in their laboratory. </span><span style="font-size: small;">The most recent and yet hyper-censored dispossession in South Texas is related to the yellow-cake uranium exploration in Lipan Apache Traditional Territory.<br /><br /> Building wealth for the elite 1%, on the backs of Texas property owners--in fact, was designed and architected by Texas Senators Hutchinson and Cornyn, who have consistently produced legislation and the means for not only whittling away, but hacking away at Texas property rights for the "security" of the "nation." In fact, the 35 federal laws that were voided to construct the Border Wall in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, were never re-instated by President Obama, and Hutchinson and Cornyn have been instrumental in ensuring that it stays that way in perpetuity. </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />I think most folks, who do not have access to anything beyond the narrow confines of corporate-controlled television, radio, and mainstream 'news', should be offered more diverse tools to wrap their heads around these questions: whose nation? what "good" and for whose benefit? Whose "security"? Certain property owners in Texas are deemed as violable and rapable--as proven along the 18 foot tall Border Wall. The message of Manifest Destiny 'deep in the heart of Texas' was made explicitly clear by the majority of Texans (Republicans, conservative, white-streamed), that if you are Indigenous, a woman, an Elder, poor, a farmer, a pastoralist-subsistence herder, Catholic, refuse to assimilate and critically question the underlying rationale of the U.S. regime and goons of the transnationals, <i>you are very likely</i> to be severed of your land rights in the name of "security." </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />The best defense is a collective defense. Those currently targeted could save themselves a great amount of suffering and stress, and save themselves a huge amount of $$ and precious energy by studying the arguments against eminent domain, condemnation, and expedited taking ... as these played out in the LRG Valley. By studying the tactics and methods deployed by the government and corporations against land owners in the Lower Rio Grande Valley--and their push back--currently targeted peoples may be able to alter the debate. The pertinent documents are all available on the University of Texas School of Law website devoted to the cases. At http://www.utexas.edu/law/centers/humanrights/borderwall/ </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />Don't be surprised if suddenly, all the properties along the path of the Keystone are suddenly found to be the "hiding places" of "terrorists", "drug lords", "cartels" and "potential threats" because that is the legal-moral framework that the government used to violently take the lands from Indigenous nations along the Lower Rio Grande Valley. </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />When I say 'violently' I mean that, when the collective action of hundreds of affected land owners organized significant resistance--refusing the government access to their lands-- the U.S. sent in armed personnel, used the presence of "boots on the ground", in the act of 'visiting' the property owners, one by one, in each community to enforce the taking of lands. Armed personnel (paid by U.S. tax payers) are used by the government to tell the targeted peoples that the constitution no longer exists in the targeted lands. Thank the Patriot Act for this reality--yea, it will eventually come after you, no matter what you thought your racial-religious-citizenship-geography protection buffer is/was. Now, folks along the Lower Rio Grande River and the Border Wall, are currently debating questions like this: </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br /> "It will be interesting to see if the dominant group--white Texans in the 'heartland'--and big ranchers’ voices are stronger--and if it will be decided that their property rights (perceived as inviolable and sacred)--are worth preserving. It will be interesting to see if the Texas dominant society will oppose the condemnation of those groups' lands. Why? Because in all their 'public opinions' of 2006 (Secure Fence Act, etc.) and 2007-2009 (during the construction of the Border Wall), they made it quite clear that it was 'OK" to use eminent domain to condemn the Aboriginal Title, Treaty Lands, Crown Grant lands, and individual private property of the low-income, Indigenous South Texans who lost land to eminent domain for the "security" of the "nation." </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />Perhaps the transnationals are now puncturing peoples' fragile conceptions of who is the 'enemy'? </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />Perhaps it would be an irony, if the most impoverished in Texas (not coincidentally all the counties of the Texas border are the highest poverty zones across the ENTIRE U.S....) though not without agency, put their vote with economic "security" ... </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Afterall, that is what the transnationals have already counted on. Just as they calculated correctly that the majority of non-Indigenous peoples would not think, but rather would react to a barrage of anti-terror and 'security of the nation' jingoism which were key factors in the condemnations along the Texas border. <br /><br />Interesting juncture, eh? </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />Finally, I wish to say a heartfelt 'good luck' to those whose lives are being destroyed by the Keystone-project which is connected to one of the most violent mass-scale destructive acts on our beautiful planet Earth. Decolonize Your Mind. If we are all going to go down due to the extreme disconnect, greed, selfishness, and self-absorption of the 1% and their 'end game', shall we not work to decolonize the borders of hate and isolation they have constructed, and instead, work collectively for dignity? </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />When will humanity (in Texas beyond borders) stand together, beyond differences, deception, corruption, the hate and isolation, the fictions, and dismantle completely this thoroughly violent and cannibalistic system? </span></div><div style="color: #20124d; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Iinidii Ideeshch'il [There is Thunder; There is Lightning]</span>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-55690601007399159152012-02-09T13:05:00.000-08:002012-02-09T14:07:41.008-08:00TEXAS AND THE FEDERAL GOVT TARGET TEXAS BORDER COMMUNITIES AS STAGING GROUND FOR INTER-AMERICAN WAR: INDIGENOUS PEOPLES BEYOND BORDERS EXPENDABLE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fkMsBPJbnFE/TzQ7JUmbEAI/AAAAAAAAAao/xKCI_Y4ugao/s1600/wheresthejustice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fkMsBPJbnFE/TzQ7JUmbEAI/AAAAAAAAAao/xKCI_Y4ugao/s1600/wheresthejustice.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N2Zt7FXmFH0/TzQ0oirfXpI/AAAAAAAAAag/CVcdtePWcSk/s1600/BRM+and+STPRA+Reps+-+Texas+Border+Summit+-+September+2011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N2Zt7FXmFH0/TzQ0oirfXpI/AAAAAAAAAag/CVcdtePWcSk/s320/BRM+and+STPRA+Reps+-+Texas+Border+Summit+-+September+2011.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: blue; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;">Military Operation Architects in Partnership with the&nbsp; '<b><i>South Texan's Property Rights Association</i></b>', whose members are included in photo with McCaffrey. &nbsp; Photo Source:</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>BR McCaffrey Associates LLC</i>, at&nbsp; http://www.mccaffreyassociates.com/pages/photos.htm, accessed February 9, 2011.</span><br /><div style="background-color: white;"><br /></div></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://mccaul.house.gov/uploads/Final%20Report-Texas%20Border%20Security.pdf">"Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment, September 2011" [<span style="color: blue;">CLICK</span>]</a></span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Excerpt: </span></div><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;">"I. <b>PURPOSE</b><br />A: The Task In June 2011, Texas Department of Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples requested that two senior military officers, <a href="http://www.mccaffreyassociates.com/pages/photos.htm" target="_blank">Gen. Barry McCaffrey</a> (Ret.) and <a href="http://www.texastribune.org/texas-mexico-border-news/texas-mexico-border/staples-and-generals-call-out-feds-border-security/" target="_blank">Gen. Robert Scales</a> (Ret.), develop and recommend a military-style strategy and operational and tactical requirements to secure the Texas portion of the U.S.-Mexico border. He also requested specific information related to the financial, manpower, technology and other resources needed to secure the Texas-Mexico border; and ways in which the roles and resources of U.S. federal agencies could be optimally deployed to facilitate implementation of these recommendations" (15).</span> <br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br /><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>"Texas Rangers Lead the Fight</b></span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>&nbsp;</b><br />The first principle of Texas border security operations is to empower local law enforcement. Soldiers often say that bad strategies cannot be salvaged by good tactics--- but bad tactics can defeat a good strategy. This saying simply reinforces the truism that no national strategy that seeks to defeat narco-terrorism can be adequately confronted unless tactical units, such as local police and federal border security stations, are properly staffed, resourced, competent and well-led.</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />"The Texas Rangers lead a cooperative program that brings together a ground, air and marine assault capability. Ranger Reconnaissance Teams are the tactical combat elements in the war against narco-terrorists. Each participating federal, state and local agency voluntarily adds its unique capabilities to the teams. The Texas Highway Patrol acts as an outer perimeter for the Rangers by funneling traffic toward Ranger border positions.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Tactical contact teams, deploying along the Rio Grande in small, concealed positions, are able to respond immediately to intelligence from Autonomous Surveillance Platform (ASP) units, DPS and National Guard surveillance helicopters, as well as calls to UCs from local police or citizens. DPS Dive Teams conduct SONAR scans of the Rio Grande and assist in recovery of vehicles and contraband in splashdown areas" (12-13).</span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br /><div style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;">LAW-Defense <i>Commentary</i>:</span></b></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #660000; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;">Not coincidentally, State and Federal military strategy on the so-called 'war on terror' will <i>increase </i>endangerment and suffering to humanity</span></b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #660000; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"> in the Texas-Mexico border region, many who are Indigenous peoples--not immigrants--of the region and the Americas.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #660000; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">In the Texas-Mexico border region, it is racism, land dispossession, subjugation, exploitation effected through organized armed violence, militarization and militarism <span style="color: #660000;">which have</span></span> <i>negatively </i>affected&nbsp; human suffering, disease, poverty, hunger, health,&nbsp; biodiversity, and cultural revitalization.&nbsp; The accumulative violent impacts of <span style="color: black;">war and armed conflict </span>has impacted Indigenous peoples which in the above scenario are abstracted and distorted as minor factors.&nbsp; Once again, a resource war is being waged and Indigenous peoples are being crafted as 'suspects', 'expendables', and 'foreigners' in our own lands, and violence is key to the colonizers' war. &nbsp;&nbsp;</span></b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #660000; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">The questions are</span> <i>who are the privileged 'local' decision-makers architecting the use of a military assault against the least privileged and most culturally, socially, economically, and legally disadvantaged communities along the Texas border?</i>&nbsp; <span style="color: black;">And</span>, <i>who are the so-called 'local' interest groups colluding at the table with the State and Federal government to destroy lands, cultures, families, heritage, histories, and existences?&nbsp;&nbsp; <span style="color: black;">And</span>, to what extent is their an entanglement or intersection between this war plan and uranium mining, oil extraction, water privatization, and mega-projects (border wall, highways, rail systems) in the region?&nbsp; What are the social relations at the decision-making table?</i></span></b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #660000; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;">Those responsible for the architecting of neo-ethnocide are enabling the U.S. and Texas military industrial complex to 'throw-away' the Indigenous communities along the Texas border deemed retrograde, 'savage', in the way of elites' development.&nbsp; The use of massively organized violence, and the construction of Indigenous peoples as 'suspects', and as expendable in the war against Mother Earth, i.e. colonialist 'progress', is a genocidal movement.&nbsp; </span></b></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br /><div style="background-color: #6fa8dc; color: black;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">LAW-Defense </span><i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">denounces</span> </i>the "Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment."&nbsp; It is the current-day extension of the Doctrine of Discovery and Manifest Destiny into the Lower Rio Grande Valley, and a revisiting of the massacres and removals experienced by our foreparents. It is a template for genocide.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></span></div><div style="background-color: #6fa8dc; color: black;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: #6fa8dc; color: black;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">LAW-Defense <i>calls upon</i></span> the Obama administration and U.S. Congress to uphold the U.N. <a href="http://cwis.org/publications/FWE/2010/12/16/obama-administration-endorses-undrip/" target="_blank"><i>Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples</i></a> and Human Rights laws.&nbsp;</span></span></b></div><div style="background-color: #6fa8dc; color: black;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><div style="background-color: #6fa8dc; color: black;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">LAW-Defense <i>invokes</i><i> </i>the </span><a href="http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf" style="background-color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" target="_blank">U.N. <i>Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples</i></a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: #6fa8dc;">, for the protection of humanity of the Texas-Mexico border region against neo-settler colonialism, militarism, and genocide.&nbsp;</span> </span></span></span></b></div><br /></div>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-28841395060712131372012-01-30T13:29:00.000-08:002012-02-03T22:26:55.637-08:00Letter of Protest to Valley Morning Star Article: "Ranches of Significance"<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pSH05w79xTI/TycNh1WaW-I/AAAAAAAAAZk/71bsXr4UvWU/s1600/NATIVE%2BWOMEN%2BWE%2BCAN%2BDO%2BIT_tumblr_lrle9c9ffx1qfs2geo1_500.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5703542327995948002" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pSH05w79xTI/TycNh1WaW-I/AAAAAAAAAZk/71bsXr4UvWU/s320/NATIVE%2BWOMEN%2BWE%2BCAN%2BDO%2BIT_tumblr_lrle9c9ffx1qfs2geo1_500.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 320px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 258px;" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8SVWUNrUosc/TycNXX-lWYI/AAAAAAAAAZY/chl48PmwaPg/s1600/wheresthejustice.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5703542148312684930" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8SVWUNrUosc/TycNXX-lWYI/AAAAAAAAAZY/chl48PmwaPg/s320/wheresthejustice.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 300px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 300px;" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: &quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: &quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: &quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: &quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: &quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: &quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: &quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms; font-weight: bold;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms; font-weight: bold;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms; font-weight: bold;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms; font-weight: bold;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms; font-weight: bold;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms; font-weight: bold;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms; font-weight: bold;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms; font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;">Dear Editor, Valley Morning Star</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Ha’shi? Danzho. Warm greetings. </span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;">I am the daughter of hereditary Chiefly families of the Ndé, and the Hada’didla Ndé, related to the Cúelcahén Ndé, Nakaiyé Ndé and Suma Ndé through my maternal and paternal lineage. I am a direct lineal descendent of Lipan Apache Chiefly peoples, and the Chiefly peoples of the Moctezuma family with Crown Land Grant Titles made between Indigenous peoples and Spain. In American, this would be translated as: I am Lipan Apache, Jumano Apache, Tlaxcalteca, and Nahua, and Indigenous to the Traditional Territory of <b><i>Konits</i></b><b><i>ąąįį</i></b><b><i> gokíyaa</i></b> (Big Water Lipan Country).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Recently my mother mailed me a copy of the article entitled, “Ranches of Significance,” (Rio Living, Section D, January 22, 2012), because she wished to share the published list of the rancherías, ranchos, and comunidades which are relevant to our families’ long place-based and land-based history in the Texas-northeast Mexico region.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"> At first glance, I was hoping to be encouraged on the author’s emphasis on local heritage life ways of the Original Peoples, which are the underlying roots of South Texas cultures. The European immigrant and settler societies borrowed fundamental concepts and knowledge systems from Indigenous peoples of the entire South Texas-North-eastern Mexico region.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"> After beginning to read this article, unfortunately, I encountered a firm barrier which deeply impacted my reading of this article. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"> I am troubled by the continuation of a particular discursive pattern, one which has for too long saturated the settler society’s racist imaginary of Indigenous peoples of our homelands. I want to share my views of the negative characterizations of ‘Native Americans’ perpetuated in Mr. Rozeff’s article, and to comment with an Indigenous perspective about why I think it is cruel, harmful and wrong for this kind of bias to be published in popular, mainstream Texas media.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"> I want to take this opportunity to provide critical feedback about the misinformation published in this article, and help the Editors gauge the diverse and critical consciousness of your readership. I also hope that this letter to the Editor will provide you a moment to re-think how race functions when minimally researched information is being provided to your readers as ‘facts’ and the harmful and indoctrinating role that public media plays in perpetuating racism against Native Americans-Indigenous peoples. I hope that my review comments will be used to educate your readers, and provide insights to your staff members.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"> An important misconception which circulates among the settler society in Texas, specifically South Texas, is that “Indians”, “Natives”, and “Native Americans” are ‘vanished’, ‘disappeared’, and in the ‘past.’ Nothing is further than the truth in South Texas, where indigenous peoples are a majority-minoritized population. Read ‘minoritized’ as colonized and subjugated. According to the National Congress of American Indians latest findings, Texas is #10, among all 50 U.S. States, for the highest number of Native Americans today, and growing every day. Over 250,000 persons of Native American heritage were counted in the 2010 Census data. (See “Census releases data on American Indian population,” at <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/census-releases-data-american-indian-population-205256402.html">http://news.yahoo.com/census-releases-data-american-indian-population-205256402.html</a>.) However, when Maya, Zapotec, Mixtec, Nahua, and numerous other Native American groups are figured, this would substantially increase Texas’ Native American population. However, state practices which lump all Native American people together in Texas as “Mexican”, “Hispanic” or “Latinos” works to mask the underlying reality.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"> This information is relevant to my critique, because it ensures that the readers of your paper get an 21<sup>st</sup> century, Indigenous perspective and critical view of an entrenched racial bias that continues to be circulated among settler societies and the media they control, thus furthering ideological objectives geared to hard-wire problematic views about “Native Americans” among the masses.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"> In his second paragraph, when he opened his article with large generalizations about Spain’s colonization of the (current-day) Lower Rio Grande and (current-day) northeastern Mexico, Mr Rozeff states: “Aggressive Native Americans were no longer a major problem to the primitive settlers.” This is a problematic in several ways. Today, it is considered an act of violence to use adjectives and qualifiers, grafted from 19<sup>th</sup> century texts and discourses, i.e. “aggressive”, next to “Native Americans.” This qualifier has been mass-produced and mass-circulated across many diverse mediums (films, pamphlets, comic books, postcards, advertisement, novels, news clippings, hate literature, etc.), and specifically attached to social and legal processes constructed to systematically destroy Native Americans in Texas.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"> This discourse immediately instructs readers to adopt, uncritically, the anti-Indigenous racism, biases, ideas, and belief systems that are bound up in that qualifier, instructing readers to think about Indigenous peoples in narrowly conceived ways. It teaches the point of view of settlers, empires, nations, and developers who often used cultural, social, legal, and military force to remove, relocate, enslave, traffic, and subjugate Native American-Indigenous peoples into forced labour in institutions developed specifically to control the Indigenous land owners’ behaviours. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"> It is important to provide the Indigenous counter-history, perspective and up-to-date facts about the realities, not the Texas Cultural Myths.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"> In the sentence, referring again to Native Americans, Rozeff alludes that Indigenous peoples “were no longer a problem.” In a sweeping generalization, Rozeff glazes over the <b><i><u>literal</u></i></b> and <b><i><u>violent</u></i></b> reality of complex processes whereby Indigenous diplomacy, broken agreements, deceptions, and extreme resistances against dispossession and roaming killing gangs led to numerous violent confrontations where Indigenous peoples were violently subjugated against our will and consent.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The underlying reality, what Rozeff is so easily dismissing, is genocidal methods which were deployed by resource-hungry settler groups, individuals, and powerful elites who based their wealth on dispossession of Indigenous peoples’ traditional territory. Rozeff’s statements disguise genocide as an acceptable history and treatment of Native American Sovereigns, i.e. the Proprietary Title Holders, also known as Aboriginal Title holders in international law. Aboriginal Title is <i>still</i> a contentious issue, i.e. unresolved and ongoing, between the current-day lineal, hereditary descendants of aforementioned Aboriginal peoples who live all across each and every county in South Texas: the Ndé, anthropologically known as ‘Lipan Apaches.’</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Furthermore, in the very same sentence , Rozeff refers to “the primitive settlers.” Thanks to the excellent development of critical and peer-reviewed investigations of South Texas’ Indigenous history and ongoing present, we know now that the majority of peoples receiving land grants from Spain (who Rozeff is so quick to racialize as “primitives” and so easily dislocates from indigenous place through use of “settlers”) were Indigenous peoples. Hereditary descendants of Chiefly Tlaxcalteca and Nahua peoples entered into Sovereign agreements, treaties, and ‘Grants” with the Spanish Sovereigns. The founding Indigenous Land Grant peoples comprised a highly complex society of Indigenous peoples who gained ‘rights’ to lands through a variety of legal measures. Three of these strategies for gaining land grant titles were through military service, conversion to Catholicism, and agricultural/ranching promises to work the lands granted. There is extensive literature about the Lipan Apache wars against the Tlaxcalteca and Nahua settlement in Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo Leon, as well as South Texas—key battlegrounds of Lipan Apache homeland defense. Thus, a great majority of the so-called, alleged “primitives” and “settlers” with Crown Title grants, were in fact Tlaxcalteca, Nahua, Otomi, Purepecha, and diverse indigenous peoples who made and who their direct descendants have made immense contributions to South Texas society today.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"> It is considered highly problematic in the United States and in international law to describe Indigenous peoples, and any group deemed as a ‘racial minority’ within a State as <b>“primitive.”</b> The discourse of the “primitive” has long been used through settler colonial regimes and societies to enact violence and to perpetuate ideologies of hate, oppression, marginalization, exploitation, and normalized poverty. South Texas is analyzed through this lens by numerous researchers globally.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"> It is unacceptable to allow this pernicious form of racism and oppression to be allowed to be published and disseminated broadly in mass media communication in South Texas, Texas, the U.S. and in the bi-national region. I think there more work could be done to examine how the values and misinformed perceptions of history as perpetuated by the colonizing groups’ descendants are deemed ‘fact’ and ‘scientific’, and automatically qualify to be ‘waived’ for any verification of fact or truth.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"> This form of unverified ‘authenticity’ is one of the many ways in which non-Indigenous peoples carry out some of the tools of domination they carry around in their ‘knapsack’ of privilege. Without critical examination of the underlying structures which enable dehumanizing and racist writing, it is allowed to be ‘out-ed’ as ‘history’. This pattern and this article demands that I protest this form of Native American bashing, and this be disrupted.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;">Entrenched and normalized racism, discrimination, and criminalization of Indigenous Peoples in the Texas-Mexico border region is allowed to go without critical review, and without disruption causes deep and irreparable harm against Indigenous peoples in the Valley and South Texas who are forced to endure the banal ignorance of those who continue to minimize our massive contributions to world knowledge, world history, and hemispheric systems upon which everyone depends for daily sustenance. Our peoples, our cultures, our values, and our ongoing existences are not ‘folklore’, nor ‘myth’; we are not frozen in ‘ancient pasts’; we are not your grotesque spectacle and backdrops for settler society’s degrading notions of ‘cultural’ and ‘multicultural’ tourism, consumption and continuing theft and appropriation of <b><i>our</i></b> <b><i>heritage</i></b>—<b><i>a complete knowledge system</i></b>—not a ‘fiesta’. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The Native American-Indigenous peoples of South Texas and North-eastern Mexico are not ‘primitive’ fixtures and backdrops of the settler society’s privileged ‘heroic pioneer’ stories. The ‘pioneer’ legacy is an reality of violent disenfranchisement, colonization, and subjugation of the Aboriginal Title owners. When you gaze upon the massive impoverished communities along the <b><u>border wall,</u></b> remember, you are looking into the ongoing effects of the ‘pioneers’ racialized debasement of Native Americans ability to exercise our self-determination in the 21<sup>st</sup> century.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Indigenous peoples of diverse heritage lineages are the majority population in the past and in the present of South Texas. However, settlers must still be educated by Indigenous peoples to use critical lenses to ‘see’ us without racist lenses and racist stories handed to you by the official histories of colonizing Texas Creation Myths. The majority of the so-called ‘Mexican’, ‘Mexican-American’, ‘Hispanic’, ‘Latinos’—as the settler society insists on naming us—are <b><i>the</i></b> <i>Indigenous</i> peoples who comprise the backbone of the LRG Valley and South Texas majority population. Indigenous peoples are still living in our original homelands, our land base at the fringes of economic, health, education, and political participation in controlling our destinies. This is the flip side of the legacy of settler pioneer society. Today, we are struggling to revitalize our cultures, values, spirituality, governance practices, community practices, and extended family institutions and Indigenous Knowledge Systems—regardless of the settler ideologies of imposed race.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;">Mr. Rozeff’s article put race at the center of the public mind-eye, and set the theme for this response to counter-narrate Rozeff’s “aggressive Native Americans” and “primitive settlers.” There are numerous other errors published in this article that deserve close and sustained public scrutiny and sustained criticism by all critical readers. The public of Texas and the Texas-Mexico transborder and transnational region deserves better, and deserves an open and respectful space to share community-based knowledge of local peoples’ Indigenous histories—and ongoing presence and present, which is a dynamic and exciting terrain of issues! However, when we as Indigenous peoples must continue to have to educate the settler society, by engaging this kind of ‘conquering history’—and refuse to be further marginalized, shut-down, silenced, shamed, and forced to swallow this kind of rhetoric –it only promotes a climate of fear, intimidation, and anger against the colonizers. My intention is to open up a space where deep learning, critical thinking, dialogue and a paradigm shift will occur.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;">It is my hope that my critique opens a community-wide dialogue about ongoing forms and modes of racism perpetrated against Native American peoples of the Americas <b><i>in Texas</i></b>. In our Ndé and Nahua languages, we have no real word for border or wall. We have to force our language to make new words to adapt to the ongoing violent dispossession waged against Indigenous peoples of the Lower Rio Grande and South Texas. We had to force our Indigenous mother tongues to create new words for ‘border’ and ‘wall.’&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;">The Ndé are in a process of self-determination, land reclamation, cultural revitalization, and self-governance. It is likely that within our lifetimes, Texas will finally be held accountable in international law for a history of genocide committed against Indigenous peoples. It is likely in our lifetimes that Texas and the U.S. will be pressured to formally, officially and politically recognize the Aboriginal Title of Ndé peoples.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;">History written <b><i>by, with, for, and alongside</i></b> Indigenous Peoples is an innovative site for building a different world view and framework that will provide a more secure, stable and prosperous society, economy, and multi-plural society with Indigenous peoples engaged in self-determination.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;">Conquering history, written without Indigenous Peoples, and without an examination of colonization, dispossession, erasure, and structural violence, will only continue to sculpt and inscribe very painful and contentious divides between Indigenous peoples of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, South Texas, the transborder region ... and the colonizing settler society.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;">Ahe’he’e, Gracias, Thank you.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;">Margo Tamez, Ph.D.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;">Member, Lipan Apache Band of Texas</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;">Co-Founder, Lipan Apache Women Defense, El Calaboz Ranchería</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #330000; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: small;">Co-Founder, Emilio Institute for Indigenous Human Rights, El Calaboz Ranchería</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-31397771464945029492011-12-19T13:34:00.000-08:002012-02-03T22:54:53.405-08:00O Holy Night, in Dine' ('Navajo') by Jana Mashonee and Silent Night in Apache<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Indigenous Language Loss and Revitalization: While Nde' of South Texas and Lower Rio Grande River region have suffered irreparable harm related to language loss, and language revitalization efforts occur without the aid of Texas and the U.S.--historical oppressors--today, the effort to recuperate language is aided by inspiration derived from closely related indigenous peoples with historical ties to Nde of Texas.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Texas (and Northeastern Mexico) is the traditional homeland and customary territory of Southern Nde' Peoples, who are close cultural relatives of Navajo, Western and Eastern Apache, and Dene peoples of North America, </span><span style="font-size: small; font-style: italic;">inclusive to northeastern Mexico.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Indigenous Peoples have the right to practice, speak, learn in, read, and to be educated in our mother tongues. Though our mother tongues have been forcefully stolen from us, through the assimilative violence of states and colonizing laws, today, thanks to the decades of hard work at the international level, Indigenous Peoples have rights--globally and at the local level (that means in the country, state, province in which we reside)-- to revitalize and recover what has been stolen and lost through no fault of our own.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Today, States have a duty and responsibility to change assimilative laws and practices, and to provide economic, social, and political aid to ensure that Indigenous Peoples in their respective bounded areas are protected from further cultural harm and must aid in the processes to support Indigenous Peoples to speak, read, and learn in our own languages.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Texas has been historically severely resistant to breaking from its oppressive and subjugating political, economic, and social systems as they affect Lipan Apaches and many indigenous peoples in the state.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Lipan Apaches continue to work systematically for self-determination and to break the violent chains of non recognition, internal colonization, and 4th World status in our own homeland </span><span style="font-size: small; font-style: italic;">Konitsaahii gokiyaa. </span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small; font-style: italic;">See</span><span style="font-size: small;">, <a href="http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf">UNDRIP, Articles 11, 13, 14</a>.</span></div><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VKa3IAip0mA" width="420"></iframe><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/K2OPVhpsemQ" width="420"></iframe></div><br /><div class="comment-text" dir="ltr" style="color: #990000; font-weight: bold;">O Holy Night (Written in Navajo)<br />Hodiyin tł’ée’go Sǫ’ bee da’dinnídíingo Áko Yisdá’iiníiłii bi’dizhchį́ Diné ti’dahooníhę́ę baazhníyáago Bijéí biyi’di haa bił dahóózhǫǫd ’Áádóó ch’ééh deeskai yę́ę bił nídahoozhǫǫd Háálá chohoo’̨́ bee ’adideezdláád Yaa ’ádaahnééh diyingo nidaal’a’í ’Éí deísółts’ą́ą́’!﻿ Christ yizhchį́ yaa dahalne’ Hodiyin tł’éego Christ ’éí bi’dizhchį́! </div><br /><span style="color: #cc0000; font-weight: bold;"><span style="color: #000099;">Enjoy this beautiful example of indigenous language empowerment and self-determination! </span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #cc0000; font-weight: bold;">Gozhoo (In beauty)</span>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-7115028679593972242011-12-18T05:28:00.000-08:002012-02-03T22:54:02.532-08:00U.S. OFFICIAL 'APOLOGY' TO NATIVE AMERICANS, "A SORRY SAGA OR FIRST STEP?"<span style="font-size: 130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: small;">Without Procedures for Redress and Restitution, Obama's 'Apology' to Native Americans for Historical and Contemporary Harms is Severely Insufficient to Address Genocide Histories and Realities Involved in the Necessary Process Related to Supporting the Recovery, Recuperation and Self-Determination of Indigenous Peoples in Texas and the Confluent Texas-Mexico Indigenous Border(ed) Region.</span><br /></span></span><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p6-7TlzGi5U/Tu4Aivl-ejI/AAAAAAAAAZM/JrqOM8KqIFc/s1600/INDIGENOUS%2BCULTURES%2BINSTITUTE%2BTEXAS.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5687483976306817586" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p6-7TlzGi5U/Tu4Aivl-ejI/AAAAAAAAAZM/JrqOM8KqIFc/s320/INDIGENOUS%2BCULTURES%2BINSTITUTE%2BTEXAS.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 320px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 240px;" /></a><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-blSp8bKik44/Tu4AdajfB5I/AAAAAAAAAZA/tZD_o3MUy_I/s1600/NATIVEAMERICANS%2BIN%2BTEXAS.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5687483884759877522" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-blSp8bKik44/Tu4AdajfB5I/AAAAAAAAAZA/tZD_o3MUy_I/s320/NATIVEAMERICANS%2BIN%2BTEXAS.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 237px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 320px;" /></a><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HytaECRWBKk/Tu3rgsnWRwI/AAAAAAAAAY0/eZYYTcbo6iI/s1600/MEXICAN%2BINDIGENOUS%2BCHILDREN_CENTER%2BWORLD%2BINDG%2BSTUDIES.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5687460851403343618" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HytaECRWBKk/Tu3rgsnWRwI/AAAAAAAAAY0/eZYYTcbo6iI/s320/MEXICAN%2BINDIGENOUS%2BCHILDREN_CENTER%2BWORLD%2BINDG%2BSTUDIES.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 211px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 320px;" /></a><br /><br /><h2 class="content_title"><br /></h2><h2 class="content_title"><br /></h2><h2 class="content_title"><br /></h2><h2 class="content_title"><br /></h2><h2 class="content_title"><br /></h2><h2 class="content_title"><br /></h2><h2 class="content_title"><br /></h2><h2 class="content_title"><br /></h2><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: small;">C</span><span style="font-size: small;">ommentary excerpted from:</span></span><br /><h2 class="content_title"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://cwis.org/publications/FWE/2010/02/17/a-sorry-saga-or-a-first-step/">Fourth World Eye</a></span></h2><div class="content_text"><div class="post-title"><h3><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://cwis.org/publications/FWE/2010/02/17/a-sorry-saga-or-a-first-step/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to A Sorry Saga or a First Step?">A Sorry Saga or a First Step?</a></span></h3></div><div class="details1" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="post-date" style="font-size: small;"><span class="post-month">Feb</span> <span class="post-day">17</span></span><span style="font-size: small;">, </span><span class="post-year" style="font-size: small;">2010</span><span style="font-size: small;"> by </span><span class="post-author" style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://cwis.org/publications/FWE/author/adol77dai51/" title="Posts by adol77dai51">adol77dai51</a></span> </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="goog_qs-tidbit-0" style="font-size: small;">An article recently surfaced in Indian Country Today entitled “</span><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/81343107.html"><span class="goog_qs-tidbit-0">A Sorry Saga</span></a></span><span class="goog_qs-tidbit-0" style="font-size: small;">,” in</span><span style="font-size: small;"> which the author<b> </b>brings attention to the Native American Apology Resolution signed by President Obama on December 19<sup>th</sup>, as part of a defense appropriation spending bill. </span><span class="goog_qs-tidbit-1" style="font-size: small;">While the Resolution had passed as a stand-alone piece of legislation</span><span style="font-size: small;"> in the Senate, it was attached to and passed with a defense appropriations spending bill within the House before making its way to President Obama. The final version of the resolution shifted from being an official apology from the US government to an apology “on behalf of the people of the United States to all Native peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native peoples by citizens of the United States.” The real crux of the Indian Country Today article revolves around the lack of publicity surrounding the apology and asks the question, “Is an apology that’s not said out loud really an apology?”</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Prior to this apology, President Obama has been largely lauded for keeping his prior commitments to Indian Country (convening a tribal leaders summit in November to hear concerns; appointing tribal leaders to IHS and Native American Affairs posts; largely maintaining and even, in some cases, increasing funding to Indian Country for this year’s budget). Ironically, it is this hidden apology that has caused some to backpeddle their vocal support for the Obama Administration. I would argue that many may view this obscure and amalgamous apology as a step backward rather than forward as it provides the perfect metaphor for the US’ longstanding nebulous public policy toward American Indian people. The US, throughout the years, has managed to promote a half in half out relationship with Indian Country in which sovereignty is recognized in pieces rather than in whole (as a long-standing continuation of the Western colonial reductionist vein of thought that brought us the Dawes Act, etc). Thus this apology, passed with no public acknowledgement, coming from the “American people” rather than the US government, and with a caveat to ensure that it cannot be construed to allow legal culpability, reeks of this prior paradigm that many in Indian Country counted would change and were hoping was changing with the election of President Obama.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Revisiting Indian Country Today’s question, I would propose what I believe to be a more pertinent question: Is an apology without subsequent action really an apology? A true apology, publicized or not, must be followed by real demonstrable action that marriages sentiments to words, words to policy, and policy to action. I laud this apology as long as it is a step toward such action. A relevant and pressing issue of substance is the current US stance against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). In 2007, the US, along with Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, were the only countries to vote against the adoption of the UNDRIP. Australia has since <a href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=30382">overturned their decision</a> in early 2009 and did so only two months after their official governmental apology to the Aboriginal populations. </span><span class="goog_qs-tidbit-2" style="font-size: small;">A true test then of the intent of the Native American Apology</span><span style="font-size: small;"> Resolution will be if the Obama Administration utilizes this apology as a foothold for reversing the current US position opposing the UNDRIP. Such an adoption would truly demonstrate President Obama’s commitment to and respect for Indian Nations and for creating a new paradigm in which true nation to nation relations can begin. </span></div></div>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-64888543242529486932011-12-04T19:19:00.000-08:002011-12-04T19:31:27.369-08:00The Upscale of U.S. Military Operations Targets Texas Border and Northeastern Mexico<a href="http://mccaul.house.gov/uploads/Final%20Report-Texas%20Border%20Security.pdf">"Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment, September 2011"</a><br />Report commissioned by <a href="http://www.texasagriculture.gov/tabid/76/Article/1725/texas-border-security-a-strategic-military-assessment.aspx">Texas Department of Agriculture,</a> Todd Staples, Commissioner.WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-85669981595003071032011-10-14T11:38:00.000-07:002012-02-03T22:55:40.658-08:00An Open Letter to ‘Occupy Wall Street’: A Shawnee-Lenape Perspective<div align="left"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DDpKG5jBtNs/TyzVApjO42I/AAAAAAAAAaQ/JeeqCQb53DQ/s1600/Occupy-Decolonize.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DDpKG5jBtNs/TyzVApjO42I/AAAAAAAAAaQ/JeeqCQb53DQ/s1600/Occupy-Decolonize.png" /></a><span style="font-size: small;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EcC49cn7bWs/TyzUEunnk0I/AAAAAAAAAaA/08lj-Told-0/s1600/Occupy-Game-of-Colonialism-e1317921939474.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EcC49cn7bWs/TyzUEunnk0I/AAAAAAAAAaA/08lj-Told-0/s1600/Occupy-Game-of-Colonialism-e1317921939474.jpg" /></a><span style="font-size: small;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>An Open Letter to ‘Occupy Wall Street’: A Lenape Perspective<br />10 October 2011</b></span></div></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div align="left" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>by Steven Newcomb</b></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><div align="left"><br />Greetings on Colonization Day, </div><div align="left"><br />I begin by prayerfully remembering our free and independent ancestors, the Lenape and all the Original Nations and Peoples of this vast TurtleIsland(Mother Earth), and of the entire Western Hemisphere from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America. </div><div align="left"><br />As you ‘occupy Wall Street,’ I ask you to reflect: You are on the island upon which our Indigenous ancestors lived and thrived for thousands and thousands of years. Please take a moment to recognize that we, the Original Nations, still exist here onTurtleIsland. We have the right to exist as free and distinct nations with full self-determination. </div><div align="left"><br />What is the true source of our many grievances? It is the mentality and behavior of greed. The word ‘America’ is the combination of two Latin words ame (a command form of ‘love!’) and rica (riches and wealth). The effects of an insatiable desire for and the pursuit of riches and wealth first afflicted our Indigenous nations and peoples, and now afflict all peoples. Clearly, we need to address and rectify the political economy of greed, and the destruction it has caused and continues to cause. </div><div align="left"><br />Greed is an unsustainable value, but it is also an illness that is rooted in addiction. It is maintained in keeping with the slogan, ‘The more you eat (consume), the more you want.’ The addict will stop at nothing to get a fix; he will sacrifice anyone and anything to feed his addiction. For this reason, an economy of greed has and will continue to sacrifice the health and well-being of women, children, men, and all living things on Mother Earth. As a great Anishinaabe leader has profoundly stated, “Their way of living is our way of dying.” It is rapidly becoming the ”way of dying” for everyone. </div><div align="left"><br />Today, after centuries of invasion and predatory consumption (‘devouring’) of our traditional lands, territories, and resources onTurtleIsland and elsewhere, the waters of the rivers and streams that were once pure enough for our ancestors to drink from are now filthy and poisoned. Water is Life. The chemical contamination of Water, and, therefore, of Life itself, is emblematic of a way of life predicated upon patterns of greed that are destined to collapse.</div><br /><div align="left">The suffering of human beings and the destructiveness to life on Mother Earth has been a direct consequence of colonization, domination, dehumanization, militarization and war. </div><br /><div align="left">Unfortunately, these conceptions and behaviors have become the metaphorical bricks and mortar of the current unsustainable world order. They are expressed in a number of documents issued in the fifteenth century by the Holy See at Vatican Hill in Rome; these documents called for the domination of all non-Christian peoples throughout the world, and for the theft of all our lands and territories. To this day, the ideas found in those papal documents are woven into US Indian law and policy.</div><br /><div align="left">Those Church documents unleashed claims to a right of conquest and domination in the name of a “right of Christian discovery.” The monarchies of Christendom used those documents to claim the territories of our nations in the Western hemisphere, simply because our territories were not yet in the possession of any Christian prince or dominator (‘dominorum christianorum’). This paradigm of domination has been used to give governments and corporations virtually unlimited access to our traditional lands and territories. If approved, the Keystone XL pipeline will be but the latest example.</div><br /><div align="left">Despite the destructive effects of more than five centuries of subjugation, as the Originally Free Nations and Peoples of Turtle Island, we still remember what it is to be truly free as exemplified by our ancestors. Our ancestors evolved life-ways and values that challenged European feudalism, medievalism, and lordship. Today, forces seem to be working toward neo-feudalism and neo-medievalism, with a long range plan for irreversible global domination in the name of ‘national security,’ under the unblinking eye of the surveillance state.</div><br /><div align="left">We have entered the ‘Brave New World’ written about by a prescient mind a generation ago. Not only have we survived, but we now have the capability of expressing ourselves in the language of the Colonizers, and we are maintaining the message that our great leaders tried to convey to your ancestors: Stop the patterns of destruction and greed before it is too late. The Chernobyl-scale release of radiation atFukushima, Japan is a clarion call. </div><div align="left"><br />We must invert the key symbol of domination. Once inverted, the patriarchal symbol of ‘the dome of domination’ becomes a bowl; when filled with water, the bowl is the symbol of the Sacred Feminine, as exemplified by theWhite Buffalo Calf Woman. She was the one who brought the Sacred Pipe to the Oglala Lakota Nation. </div><div align="left"><br />The Living Laws and Values of Turtle Island that the White Buffalo Calf Woman brought include: Honor and Respect; Compassion and Pity; Sharing and Caring (to carry the well-being of the People in one’s heart); Patience and Fortitude; Bravery and Courage; Humility; Seeking Wisdom and Seeking Understanding. In keeping with the White Buffalo Calf Woman’s teachings, Love and the Beautification of Life are healing values that need to replace the love of riches and wealth. </div><div align="left"><br />Next May, 2012, a year of great transformation, we will be inNew Yorkat the United Nations as part of our work toward decolonization at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The theme of the Permanent Forum will be the destructive legacy and deadly impact of the Doctrines of Discovery and Domination on Indigenous Nations and Peoples and on Mother Earth. We ask for your support by renouncing the Doctrine of Christian Discovery.<br /><br />Steven Newcomb, Shawnee/Lenape, is co-founder and co-director of the Indigenous Law Institute, author of Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, and a columnist for the Indian Country Today Media Network.</div></b></span></div>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-81379588884405948752011-10-11T17:45:00.000-07:002011-10-11T17:48:09.382-07:00OCCUPIED ON THE TEXAS-MEXICO BORDER! DECOLONIZE WALL STREET!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FxnEYd5I_gM/TpTjY-ZsUlI/AAAAAAAAAYI/Yj2Qwyg4I4Y/s1600/OCCUPIED_2.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 529px; height: 342px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FxnEYd5I_gM/TpTjY-ZsUlI/AAAAAAAAAYI/Yj2Qwyg4I4Y/s320/OCCUPIED_2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5662400649718682194" border="0" /></a>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-69227217868566597962011-10-09T07:32:00.000-07:002011-10-11T18:06:16.173-07:00A Key Destination of Tar Sands Oil?... Texas-Mexico Border. Do Tell.<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--fb_Bw3iAG4/TpG2wLH2VaI/AAAAAAAAAXc/lo9Kna3Cb6o/s1600/JULY%2B12%2B2011%2B177.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 320px; float: left; height: 240px;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5661507145317111202" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--fb_Bw3iAG4/TpG2wLH2VaI/AAAAAAAAAXc/lo9Kna3Cb6o/s320/JULY%2B12%2B2011%2B177.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div>After watching the <a href="http://www.c-span.org/Events/C-SPAN-Event/10737424635/">full testimonies </a>held at the U.S. State Department on the issue of whether the U.S. should permit TransCanada Corporation to construct and operate a pipeline for transporting lethal oil from the Alberta Tar Sands, situated in the Traditional Territory of the Dene, I am even more alarmed about deep knowledge <strong>gaps and breakages</strong>, and the colonial blinders which are still preventing the majority spokespersons on these issues to examine the <em>interlocking relationship</em> of the Tar Sands in <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><strong>Dene country</strong></span> to Militarization in <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><strong>Nde' country</strong></span> (<strong>border wall, police terror state, detention centers, mega-rail, mega-bridge, and mega-highway projects connecting Lower Rio Grande Valley to northeastern Mexico 'ports'</strong>). There still seems to be an significant <em>vaguery</em> among the peoples (on both sides of the issue) about what could happen to the oil, the lands, peoples, water, air, and life... after <em>refinery</em> in Port Arthur, Texas, and where it would travel from its 'distribution' points along the Texas-Mexico border.</div><br />I'm more worried today than yesterday, witnessing the compelling testimonies and aghast at the lack of inquisitiveness on the part of the movement to follow the documentation trail left by Koch Industries (see September 24, 2011 post, scroll down). It is stunning <em>how well</em> the <strong>Texas connections</strong> to the oil-chemical-transportation League of Corporate Empires benefits from the colonial and racist implications of geographical-historical ignorance in the U.S. about indigenous struggles in South Texas and the Lower Rio Grande.<br /><br /><div></div>Again, please refer to the <strong>September 24, 2011 post on this site (scroll down)</strong>, providing important details regarding Koch Industries' statement explicitly saying that the refined fuels will be going to Mexico, and from there other sites across the hemisphere. To my knowledge, this is the only site in the hemisphere that is making this crucial connection. Unfortunately, this is beginning to feel like the same isolation room that we experienced around the border wall.<br /><br /><div>I wonder if the 'progressive' camps of either movement--the anti-Keystone XL Pipeline or the Occupy Wall Street movement--perceive that their government and related corporations constructed the border wall, and now the MEGA-COLOSSAL HEAVY RAIL FREIGHT BRIDGE in concert with a much larger transhemispheric 'Security Prosperity Partnership, which entails transporting <strong>something</strong> considered a <strong>'priority matter of national security'</strong> <em><span style="font-size:180%;">OVER</span></em> the border wall which stands in the traditional territory of Lipan Apaches?<br /></div><br />How will this happen on the ground?<br /><br /><div>Through 2 important mega-projects currently underway across the Texas-Mexico border:</div><br /><div>1. A large rail transport system, which, low and behold, will traverse above the border wall in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, Cameron County.<br /></div><br /><div>2. The Trans-Texas Corridor (connecting Albert, Canada to South Texas, to Mexico).</div><br /><div>For a more in-depth view from El Calaboz, <strong>read the September 24, 2011 post.</strong></div><br /><div></div>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-52685548836274133582011-09-29T23:26:00.000-07:002011-09-29T23:36:25.239-07:00Aboriginal Title, Indigenous Proprietary Title, and Nde' Inherent Rights to Lands and Territories, (cont'd)Picking up where I left off <a href="http://lipanapachecommunitydefense.blogspot.com/2011/09/aboriginal-title-indigenous-proprietary.html">earlier</a>,<br /><br />Consider this view, excerpted from Gordon I. Bennett, <i>27 Buff. L. Rev. 617 (1977-1978)</i><br /> Aboriginal Title in the Common Law: A Stony Path through Feudal Doctrine, Bennett, Gordon I. <br />[ 20 pages, 617 to 636 ]<br /><br />"In Johnson v. McIntosh ° and Worcester v. Georgia," two landmark<br />decisions that still constitute the locus classicus on the subject,<br />Chief Justice Marshall referred to the principle evolved by the European<br />powers in their settlement of America that "discovery gave title<br />to the government by whose subjects, or by whose authority, it was<br />made, against all other European governments, which title might be<br />consummated by possession."'' <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Chief Justice added the vital</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">caveat, however,</span> that this principle could not<br />annul the previous rights of those who had not agreed to it. It regulated<br />the right given by discovery among the European discoverers;<br />but could not affect the rights of those already in possession,'either<br />as aboriginal occupants, or as occupants by virtue of a discovery<br />made before the memory of man. It gave the exclusive right to purchase,<br />but did not found that right on a denial of the possessor to<br />sell.' 3 [The original inhabitants] were admitted to be the rightful occupants<br />of the soil, with a legal as well as a just claim to retain possession<br />of it, and to use it according to their own discretion.14<br />Central to Marshall's analysis was the assertion that aboriginal rights<br />stem from ancient occupation per se, and are not dependent on a public<br />grant or official acknowledgment."<br />...<br />"Nor is it true, as respondent urges, that a tribal claim to any<br />particular lands must be based upon a treaty, statute, or other formal<br />government action."<br /><br />"This view is confirmed by a whole cluster of Supreme Court decisions<br />and, most recently, by the Court of Claims in Lipan Apache<br />Tribe v. United States,'8 where Judge Davis dispelled any lingering<br />doubts:<br />Indian title based on aboriginal possession does not depend on sovereign<br />recognition or affirmative acceptance for its survival. Once<br />established in fact, it endures until extinguished or abandoned..."<br />"The correct enquiry is, not whether the Republic of Texas accorded<br />or granted the Indians any rights, but whether that sovereign extinguished<br />their pre-existing occupancy rights."<br /><br />Ponder this.<br /><br />Time to rest, until tomorrow...<br /><br />(to be continued)WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-82771271519236274102011-09-29T17:05:00.001-07:002012-01-31T23:01:15.948-08:00Aboriginal Title, Indigenous Proprietary Title, and Nde' Inherent Right to Self-Governance<div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">A Underlying Issue Still Contested from Indigenous Perspectives: Neither the U.S. nor Texas Had Rights to Extinguish Aboriginal Title of Southern Lipan Apaches of South Texas &amp; LRGV</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">While many indigenous peoples have contested the final decisions of the infamous Indian Claims Commission, few if any have ever set forth an analysis ourselves of the decisions, nor critiqued how these decisions effected the ongoing self-determination, survival and existence of Nde', or Southern Lipan Apaches in South Texas and in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Why? How and why did other indigenous peoples ('Mescaleros', et. al) ever become recognized as the sole proprietary owners of the traditional territories of Nde' of what is today South Texas, Lower Rio Grande Valley &amp; River, and our territories in Mexico?</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">This is a grave harm, still to be resolved for Nde' self-determination. It is clear that our peoples, under great threat of genocidal destruction before and during the time of the Indian Claims Commission, were a vulnerable indigenous people without means to counter-act or to defend against this level of deceit and injustice.</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Today, it is time to convene, and to re-assess the outcomes of the ICC, several decades later, and the work that will be entailed in launching an Aboriginal Title landmark case to prove Nde' Aboriginal Title and traditional territorial rights to Konitsaii Gokiyaa, Lipan country.</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">For now, here is something to absorb...</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I believe it is time for a critical gathering of leadership to deconstruct the assumptions built withing the conclusions of the Indian Claims Commission, and the United States and Texas as beneficiaries, which effectively left unrecognized and peripheral all Nde' families, communities, and organizations.</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Here is an excerpt of the final decision, and the full document is here: http://digital.library.okstate.edu/icc/v36/iccv36p023.pdf</span></div><br /><br /><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">Excerpt, 36 Ind. Cl. Comm. 7, Docket #22-C </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">"The Commission found the detailed reports submitted by the above experts to be informative. However, the Commission has rejected as conjectural, speculative, and not supported by the preponderance of the evidence t h e conclusions of p l a i n t i f f s ' expert witnesses as to the extent of Lipan and Mescalero aboriginal ownership of the lands claimed herein for the time periods in question. The Commission also r e j e c t s the p l a i n t i f f ' s</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">experts' conclusions as of the date of taking.</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The defendant's expert witness was D r . Kenneth F. Neighbours, a</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">historian who has written extensively about the history of Texas and about i(afg Robert Neighbors, the famous Indian agent of the Texas tribehwho served in that capacity under both the Republic of Texas and the United States governments. His report, an ethnohistory of the Lipan and Mescalero Indians, and his testimony related chiefly to the land and Indian policies of the respective sovereignties that ruled Texas through the 19th century. Be</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">36 Ind. C l . C m . 7 65 concluded t h a t , as a r e s u l t of such p o l i c i e s , the Indians of Texas, and p a r t i c u l a r l y the Lipan and Mescalero Indians, did not have aboriginal t i t l e to any lands within the State of Texas, although a t various times these and other Indian t r i b e s had h i s t o r i c a l l y been located a t d i f f e r e n t places within t h e area. The Commission has rejected Dr. ~ e i g h b o u r s ' legal conclusions r e l a t i v e t o Indian t i t l e in the State of Texas as contrary to the law of the case.</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">16. Conclusion.</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Based upon the foregoing findings of f a c t and a l l the evidence of</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">record, the Commission has concluded as follows:</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">(a) From time immemorial, through the periods of Spanish and Mexican sovereignty, and the Republic of Texas, and, u n t i l November 1, 1856, when, as a r e s u l t of the actions of the United States army in carrying out federal policy, it was compelled to vacate its ancestral home, the aboriginal Lipan Apache Tribe held Indian t i t l e to the following described land situated within that area i n Texas claimed by principal p l a i n t i f f herein :</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Beginning a t that point on the Rio Grande River which is the</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">northwest corner of Zapata County; thence e a s t e r l y along the</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">common boundary of Zapata and Webb counties to t h e southeast corner of Webb County; thence northeasterly on a l i n e , crossing the Nueces River, to the town of Pawnee i n Bee County; thence</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">northwesterly on a l i n e to the northwest corner of Bandwa County; thence northwesterly on a l i n e to the northwest corner of Edwards County; thence south along the western boundary of Edwards County and adjoining Kinney County to the southwest corner of Kinney County on the Rio Grande River; thence southeasterly along the east bank of the Rio Grande River to the place of beginning.</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">(b) From time immemorial, through the periods of Spanish and Mexican and occupied exclusively i n Indian fashion a l a r g e a r e a i n eouth c e n t r a l 36 Ind. C1. Comm. 7 New Mexico and west Texas between the Rio Grande River and the Pecos</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">River. By v i r t u e of the Executive Order of May 29, 1873, e s t a b l i s h i n g the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation i n New Mexico, the Mescalero Apache Tribe relinquished to the United S t a t e s without the payment of compensation, Indian t i t l e t o a l l lands outside of the reservation. See Mescalero Apache Tribe v. United S t a t e s , 17 Ind. C1. Comm. 100 (1966).</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Accordingly, May 29, 1873, is the e f f e c t i v e date of the extinguishment of a l l Mescalero aboriginal land claims including Mescalero Indian t i t l e t o the following described area in Texas.</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Beginning a t t h e southeast corner of the S t a t e of New</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Mexico; thence south-southwest on a l i n e across the Pecos</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">River t o the southeast corner of Reeves County Texas; thence</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">southwest on a l i n e to Ft. Davis i n J e f f Davis County; thence</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">northwest on a l i n e to the town of Van Horn in Culberson County; thence northwest on a l i n e to the northeast corner El Paso County, Texas, said corner being on the southern boundary of the S t a t e of New Mexico; thence e a s t e r l y along the southern boundary of the S t a t e of New Mexico to t h e p o i n t of beginning. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">(c) The evidence of record does not support Lipan and Mescalero</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">aboriginal t i t l e claims to lands outside of the areas awarded above.</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">(d) The Tonkawa Tribe of Indians, second intervenors, herein has</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">f a i l e d t o prove by the preponderance of the evidence t h a t s a i d t r i b e is the successor in i n t e r e s t t o the a b o r i g i n a l Lipan Apache Tribe.""</span></div><br /><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Here is another view:</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">from, </span><span style="font-size: large; font-style: italic;">Aboriginal Title: The Modern Jurisprudence of Tribal Land Rights,</span><span style="font-size: large;"> by Paul G. McHugh, (Oxford University Press, 2011), 178-179.</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">"In Calder, Justice Hall drew upon the American cases on extinguishment when he indicated that aboriginal title 'could not therefore be extinguished except by surrender to the Crown or by competent legislative authority, and then only be specific legislation.' His inspiration was the opinion of Davis J in Lipan Apache (1967) where it was said that in 'the absence of a "clear and plain intention" in the public records that the sovereign "intended to extinguishe all of the claimants' rights" to their property' the Indian title continued at law. That approach towards the interpretation of statutes affecting Indian title had been used in a sequence of cases from at least the early twentieth century. Ultimately, it went back to a canon for the interpretation of Indian treaties given by Chief Justice Marshall who said (1832) that treaties to 'be construed, not according to the technical meaning of their words, but in the sense in which they would naturally be understood by Indians'. As the doctrine of aboriginal title became articulated in the courts, judges routinely invoked this 'clear and plain intention' rule for the interpretation of statutes."</span></div><br /><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">(to be continued)</span></div>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-39101444845517937602011-09-24T12:59:00.000-07:002012-01-31T23:03:19.284-08:00Margo Tamez Responds to Article, "Dozens arrested outside White House during oil sands protest," by Lee-Anne Goodman<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UygeRQONerc/Tn-BJfBBQ_I/AAAAAAAAAXU/LDJh7cfuKHA/s1600/JULY%2B12%2B2011%2B177.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5656381656945214450" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UygeRQONerc/Tn-BJfBBQ_I/AAAAAAAAAXU/LDJh7cfuKHA/s320/JULY%2B12%2B2011%2B177.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 240px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 320px;" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;; font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;; font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-size: 78%;">Construction of Mega Project Bridge in Cameron County, Texas-Mexico Border, August, 2011.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-size: 78%;">Photo by Margo Tamez, Copyright Holder. May not be reproduced without permission.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #330000; font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">Post #2: <a href="http://www.ubc.ca/okanagan/ccgs/faculty/tamez.html" style="color: #6666cc;">Margo Tamez</a><span style="color: #6666cc;">,</span> An Nde' Woman and Hada'didla-Konitsaii Nde' Clan Member of El Calaboz Rancheria <span style="font-style: italic;">Responds <a href="http://lipanapachecommunitydefense.blogspot.com/2011/09/south-texas-links-to-keystone-pipeline.html" style="color: #330000;">(Post #1 in this series)</a></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">[</span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">Note</span><span style="font-size: large;">: A large portion of this piece was originally posted on August 24,, 2011 to the NAIPC/North American Indigenous Peoples' Caucus List Serve]</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">Introduction</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ha'shi?, Greetings to all.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I wish to address the issue of the Indigenous Peoples' efforts to resist further encroachment by exploitative extraction, specifically in regards to the <a href="http://www.tarsandsaction.org/spread-the-word/key-facts-keystone-xl/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">'Tar Sands</span></a>'/Oil Sands extractions in </span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">Indigenous Peoples' traditional territories </span><span style="font-size: large;">and Indigenous Peoples' </span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.ienearth.org/keystone-xl-pipeline.html">resistances </a></span><span style="font-size: large;">to</span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">ongoing violations of human rights, and transgressions and disrespect for the fundamental and minimal standards agreed upon by member States of the United Nations, as articulated in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_on_the_Rights_of_Indigenous_Peoples"><span style="font-weight: bold;">UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples</span>.</a> The aggression against Indigenous Peoples by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settler_colonialism"><span style="font-weight: bold;">settler governments</span></a> of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta">Alberta </a>and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada">Canada</a>, and the involved corporations, not limited to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransCanada_Corporation">TransCanada Corporation</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_XL">Keystone XL</a>, (as I will share below in my discussion about the pipeline, refinery and impacts in Texas and Nde' traditional territory) are a grave concern of Nde' peoples, chiefly chief traditional authorities, clan leaders, elected leaders, and our related Indigenous relations throughout the Texas and northeastern Mexico region. Furthermore, I am concerned about, and will address herein, the still generalized 'hints' to the impacts on Indigenous Peoples in traditional territories </span><span style="font-size: large; text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">unceded by </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Indigenous Nations</span> </a>across the (current-day) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_states">U.S</a>., and specifically will turn my attention to the 'receiving' refinery sites in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Texas">South Texas</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Rio_Grande_Valley">Lower Rio Grande Valley</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeastern_Mexico">northeastern Mexico</a>. These directly impact Nde' peoples, peoplehood, human rights, and self-determination.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I wish to weigh in on the still under-examined and under-analyzed impacts upon the </span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">Indigenous communities in (current day) South Texas and northeastern Mexico</span><span style="font-size: large;">, where the Canadian, U.S., and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_perry">Texas government officials</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cornyn">powerful dominating ruling elites</a>--who are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kay_Bailey_Hutchinson">direct, lineal descendants of the settler society</a>, with <a href="http://www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial/world_map_indigenous.html">long-standing TEXAS-based policy-making</a> in favor of a militarized and violent policing to repress the self-governance and recognition of Indigenous Peoples in Texas, as well as institutional organizations and certain <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minuteman_Project">'citizen' groups</a>--</span><span style="font-size: large; font-style: italic;">have been working vigilantly</span><span style="font-size: large;"> in support of </span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">TransCanada corporation, interest-holders (which, as of today also includes <a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&amp;address=439x1985871">Hillary Clinton and some of her top aides</a> along her career trajectory).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">Local Contexts</span><span style="font-size: large;">:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Throughout July and August, 2011, in El Calaboz Rancheria, and traditional territories of Hada'didla and Konitsaii Nde', along the <a href="http://www.utexas.edu/law/centers/humanrights/borderwall/">Texas-Mexico border,</a><a href="http://lipanapachecommunitydefense.blogspot.com/2011/05/el-calaboz-2011-gathering.html">"El Calaboz Rancheria Gathering on Indigenous Knowledge, Lands, Territories and Human Rights"</a> witnessed and documented the construction of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaproject">mega-project</a></span> the Indigenous Peoples and representatives who gathered during the infrastructure for the large-scale transportation of what we construe will be not only oil, but also other extracted elements, such as uranium, which is being targeted once again by U.S. government and corporations.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Once refined in coastal <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_refineries#Texas">S. Texas refineries, </a>the oil will be transported to Mexico (and no doubt the other U.S.-controlled military 'base', <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia">Columbia</a>). All this colossal planning, financing, and implementation measures carried out by and through the abuses of power by elites, did, and continues to, occlude the the grave and concrete reality of ongoing violations of rule of law and human rights which the Keystone XL Pipeline and the Tar Sands projects have already carried out--by obscurring their real activities from the Indigenous Peoples and leadership, as well as U.S. taxpayers. These entities have been negating their duties and responsibilities to enter into meaningful consultation relative to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as treaties and other constructive arrangements which impact Indigenous Peoples' lands and</span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;"> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unceded_territory">territories </a></span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unceded_territory">unceded</a>. </span><span style="font-size: large;">The laws regarding consent of Indigenous Peoples and regarding the illegal seizure, dispossession and taking of land from Indigenous Peoples for development projects, require that States and corporations provide Indigenous Peoples' <a href="http://www.manitobachiefs.com/policy/research/documents/FPIC_ENG_110908WEB.pdf"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Free Prior and Informed Consent</span></a>, the possibility of redress, restitution, and reparation for harms.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">There is a crucial opportunity for <a href="http://www.lipanapachebandoftexas.com/index.html">Nde' Peoples of (current-day) South Texas and Northeastern Mexico</a>, in bifurcated regions such as the Texas-Mexico border, to form important, and much needed dialogues and pro-active decision-making on this issue because there are severe consequences and direct impacts of the Keystone XL Pipeline megaproject that will negatively impact the self-determination, nationhood, peoplehood, and self-governance autonomy of presently living and future Nde' generations.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">We Nde' are essentially being handed a spiritual, sacred, ethical and moral opportunity to move forward in Nde' Justice &amp; Governance which is based upon the principles, protocols and perspectives of Nde' millenial systems, not by Eurocentric systems of racialization, tribalization, indigenism, and false identity.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">My relatives, we Nde' are being given an opportunity to stand up in collective agreement and consensus to act by our principles of Nde' Justice, which is inherently connected to our familial and inherent relationships to Konitsaii Gokiyaa, Nde' Homelands.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Current events demand that there be an emboldened leadership, representing inclusive participation to decision-making, that emerges now in a forthright manner. Emerging leadership models, based integrally upon Nde' Knowledge Systems--not based on Eurocentrically imposed and false governance, modeled after the U.S. bankrupt and corrupt 'democratic' imprisonment systems--but, rather, based upon Nde' Knowledge, Memory, Relationships, Clans, First Foods, Sacred Ritual &amp; Ceremonial Systems, and centrality of matrilineal and matrilocal justice and governance-- is crucial in the process of decolonizing Nde' actions towards self-determination today.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The voices and realities of Indigenous Peoples in bare existence/bare life within the 'dead-zones' of purported corrupted 'nation to nation' relations with States and corporations floods the news everyday, and yet, many Indigenous peoples' needs in our community go unanswered, ignored, denied. That is not the path toward true self-determination and self-governance.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is time for Nde' leaders to step up and be voiced and listened to in regards to the Keystone XL Pipeline megaproject, and the conspicuous covering over of the reality of Nde' contestations with the U.S. and Texas over the traditional territory which will be exploited in this scheme. The Nde' Peoples who are the traditional land owners, will be denied any voice, agency, or means for redress need to be exposed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The current news stories covering the Keystone XL Pipeline downplay any impacts upon over 250,000 Indigenous peoples identified in Texas legislative papers as 'Native Americans', and the hundreds of thousands of Indigenous Peoples in Texas identified by the state as 'Mexicans' or 'Latin Americans.'</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">These omissions have been set into stone by the uncritical voices that U.S. liberal-progressive groups' have etched onto the consciousness of the (so-called) 'American Heartland'. Making Indigenous Peoples in Texas absent is a political issue and a human rights issue. Many groups gain to benefit from maintaining this tactical omission from public view.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Indigenous leaders of the Nde' nation, it is time to come together into council, and make key decisions for the Nde' way of life for our future generations. We must articulate and specify exactly where we Nde' stand on this issue of the Tar Sands, the Keystone XL Pipeline, and other mega industrial projects, such as the border wall, the militarization of our Konitsaii Gokiyaa, and life-threatening projects such as the currently unfolding uranium yellow-cake and water dispossession/taking/extraction slated within our traditional homelands of South Texas as well.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">Old Fashioned Ignorance and 'Nativism' Amidst the U.S.Tar Sands Protests?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I wish to share my perspective about how the liberal voice drowns out and occludes the realities of impacts of the Keystone XL Pipeline upon Indigenous Peoples &amp; our lands in Texas</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The liberal/progressive/anarchist forms of activisms, while important to elevating this important issue to the mainstream public, should not be the 'first' nor the 'last' voice that shapes this issue in the American mainstream because they do not have the education about Indigenous Issues necessary to educate the public about the underlying issues at stake. How the liberal-progressive activists shape and develop the representation of Indigenous Peoples and our struggles and intertwine their limited understanding of this arena of power relations will have a huge impact on how people perceive the harms committed by the Keystone Pipeline XL project. The issue of incorrect representation in the media is having and will continue to have a harmful impact on Indigenous Peoples throughout the U.S., and particularly in Texas and Mexico.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I am deeply skeptical about the selective historical amnesia of the liberal minded and spirited protesters arrested in front of the White House in late August. I have a concern about the genocidal violence and transgressions by the settler society, deep in the heart of Texas, and the fact that this obvious factoid is not being examined closely nor appearing in any media alerts produced by the organizations and groups leading the charge in a U.S. context.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">While I agree that alliances, nontraditional alliances, have always been key to our long-term goals of self-governance with lands and territories, the liberal/anarchist sector in this particular arena of struggle, has not yet contributed anything </span><span style="font-size: large; font-style: italic;">critical </span><span style="font-size: large;">to the public's understanding about the specificity of the Keystone XL Pipeline's </span><span style="font-size: large; font-style: italic;">exact </span><span style="font-size: large;"> distribution centers and refineries along the Texas coast. </span><span style="font-size: large; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Texas</span><span style="font-size: large;"> is 'big', true, though the indigenous politics there are by no means invisible, nor difficult to locate with a minimal effort in Google.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I'm skeptical about the U.S. environmentalist focus on the dirty business of 'refining' and/or 'transporting' the oil, and how this lens completely obfuscates the underlying resistances, (centuries long) and struggles spearheaded by Indigenous Peoples across Texas, and in Konitsaii Gokiyaa, our homeland. We must look more critically at the way impacts in the U.S., by liberal-progressives focuses more on how the Pipeline project will impact their conception of U.S. territory as the domain of U.S. citizens and taxpayers, not Indigenous Peoples per se. The way in which 'rights' as articulated by liberal-progressives overshadows Indigenous Peoples interests, and focuses on the 'environment' and the limited way in which they view this as an Indigenous struggle against abusive and violent state governments, dispossession, criminalization, neocolonization, neoliberalism, and land claims contestations.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is not any longer possible, given the prominence of Texas indigenous activism across the digital spaces, to not see that Indigenous peoples in Texas have been involved in a long-term battle and commitment to land claims, self-determination, self-governance, and autonomy in Indigenous Proprietary Title.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Yet, there is a great vagueness and unspecified, ethereal </span><span style="font-size: large; font-style: italic;">absence </span><span style="font-size: large;">of groundedness surrounding the liberal-progressive activism in the 'front-line' (those arrested in Washington D.C.) of the Keystone XL Pipeline issue. The skimming over the lived realities of Indigenous Peoples on the real ground in S. Texas is a red flag.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">How U.S. progressives enact their 'American' indignation and outrage about Indigenous issues embroiled in land and territorial paradigm shifts is directly tied to their cultures' historical amnesia, and in my opinion, we Indigenous Peoples cannot sustain an alliance with liberal progressives in the long run, due to an ongoing denial of <a href="http://www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial/texas.html">genocide in Texas</a>, the problematic negation of Nde' presence as the traditional holders of Aboriginal Title to the lands and resources in question.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I sincerely hope the liberal-progressives are learning the process of becoming meaningful and true 'allies' with, by, for, and alongside Indigenous Peoples is a lifelong journey which must be disseminated intergenerationally.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">True allies in Indigenous Peoples' struggles for self-determination and autonomy are rare. It is one thing to vehemently and honorably uphold the rights of the Indigenous Peoples in Canada, and quite another to bring this concept to bear in regards to unpacking privilege, violence, and ignorance as the normed U.S. and Texas 'Indian Policy' which threatens through denying the very existence of Nde' Peoplehood, rights, and Aboriginal Title in Texas, which has everything to do with true Indigenous to Indigenous alliance building on the Keystone XL Pipeline issue. It is a much deeper relationship related to reciprocity and mutual protection of our rights as the land owners.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Sadly, what I have witnessed thus far in the media, is a vacancy and muted absence of any such leanings to true decolonization by the purported liberal-progressive 'allies' of this important anti-colonial movement spearheaded by the Indigenous Peoples.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The time has come to put the faces and places on this issue within a U.S. geopolitical, historical, and political-economic map, so to speak. We Indigenous Peoples must step up and claim this issue as ours across all our similarities and differences. We Indigenous Peoples must take responsibility to ‘locate’ the shatter-zone of impacts to our peoples, lands, and futures within precise sites where the ongoing colonialist oppression of the Tar Sands...is coming home, intimately and violently.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> We mustn't miss/avert the downstream specificities, or relegate this work to others who do not know, nor care to apply, the real history of colonization and ongoing genocide.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">Considerations Related to the UNDRIP, Article 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, and 36, 37.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">We cannot deny how the </span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">‘<a href="http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/1520">Security, Prosperity Trade Partnership</a></span><span style="font-size: large;">’ and U.S. national interests and foreign policy on the U.S.-Mexico border, Mexico, and Latin America <i>produces the conditions</i> for the terrain of multiple and intersecting oppressions. Examine the Canada-<b>Tar Sands</b> to <b>South Texas </b>refineries to exports to <b>Mexico, Central and South America...and Caribbean</b></span> matrix.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">For example: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Going to Jail for the Environment,” The Baltimore Sun, August 22, 2011. <a href="http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-08-22/news/bs-ed-tar-sands-20110822_1_wind-farms-tar-sands-pipeline">http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-08-22/news/bs-ed-tar-sands-20110822_1_wind-farms-tar-sands-pipeline</a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “</span><span style="font-size: large;">The other vision embraces a massive, 1,700-mile pipeline </span><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow; color: #660000; font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">from Canada to </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">Texas</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"> full of "tar sands oil," the dirtiest petroleum fuel. This proposed pipeline, if built, would steer our nation toward another generation of polluting automobile use.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Waxman dares ask if tar sands oil pipeline will benefit <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_Industries">Koch Industries</a>,” Daily KOS, Friday, May 27, 2011, </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/27/979072/-Waxman-dares-ask-if-tar-sands-oil-pipeline-will-benefit-Koch-Industries">http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/27/979072/-Waxman-dares-ask-if-tar-sands-oil-pipeline-will-benefit-Koch-Industries</a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “</span><span style="font-size: large;">Koch also <a href="http://www.eia.gov/neic/rankings/refineries.htm">owns a heavy oil refinery in Texas</a>, so it is not unreasonable to assume it will also have some stake in tar sands crude moving through the Keystone XL pipeline.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Most of the refined transportation fuels we are exporting is going to countries (e.g., <b style="color: #660000;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;">Mexico</span></b></span><span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">,</span><span style="font-size: large;"> Canada) that have significant refinery capacity. What these countries do not have is the ability to refine heavy crude oil like that produced from tar sands. ExxonMobil, ConocoPhilips, or Koch Industries cannot sell tar sands crude to these countries, but can sell them refined products from that crude.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Much of those exports are shipped from the <b style="color: #660000;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;">Gulf Coast refineries</span></b></span><span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">,</span><span style="font-size: large;"> particularly those in <b style="color: #660000;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;">Texas</span></b>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">What the Keystone XL pipeline does is bring tar sands <b style="color: #660000;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;">oil to refineries in Texas</span></b></span><span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> So, the question someone should be asking is whose interests are being served by the pipeline. Does it serve the energy needs of American consumers as claimed by Republicans like Fred Upton? Or does it serve to move tar sands crude from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries where petroleum products can be produced for export?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Nde' and relations, let us move together in unity, clarity, affirmation and in a forthright manner. The current construction of a mega- bridge over the Texas-Mexico border wall, (down the road from El Calaboz) is a ‘connector’ for the TransTexas Corridor (Texas to Canada) giving capacity for large freight trains... to travel over the wall, to <i>move</i> oil from Canada (source) to Texas (refineries) to Mexico (‘markets’). It is time for decisive action.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Ahi'dn, thank you,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.ubc.ca/okanagan/ccgs/faculty/tamez.html">Margo Tamez</a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Hada'didla Nde', Konitsaii Nde'</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lipan Apache Band of Texas</span></div>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2469663350484227523.post-49366218497499146172011-09-24T12:01:00.000-07:002012-01-31T23:04:13.678-08:00South Texas Links to Keystone Pipeline and Tar Sands (Dene Traditional Territory/Alberta, Canada)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Yic3bD9xaFA/Tn42EuZO_AI/AAAAAAAAAW8/_uep2SiphdE/s1600/NDE%2BRESISTANCE%2B2011.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5656017636825168898" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Yic3bD9xaFA/Tn42EuZO_AI/AAAAAAAAAW8/_uep2SiphdE/s320/NDE%2BRESISTANCE%2B2011.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 423px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 567px;" /></a></div><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 130%;"><span style="color: #330000; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span></span><br /><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 130%;"><span style="color: #330000; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span></span><br /><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 130%;"><span style="color: #330000; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span></span><br /><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 130%;"><span style="color: #330000; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span></span><br /><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 130%;"><span style="color: #330000; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span></span><br /><br /><br /><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 130%;"><span style="color: #330000; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span></span><br /><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 130%;"><span style="color: #330000; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span></span><br /><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 130%;"><span style="color: #330000; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span></span><br /><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 130%;"><span style="color: #330000; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span></span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 130%;"><span style="color: #330000; font-weight: bold;">South Texas Indigenous Peoples Should Be Seriously Concerned About the Links Between the Tar Sands and Indigenous Peoples' Human Rights,</span></span></span><br /><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 130%;"><span style="color: #330000; font-weight: bold;">Post #1: Background Context</span></span><a href="http://www.foe.org/major-tar-sands-oil-pipeline-spill-adds-doubts-about-controversial-keystone-xl-proposal"><br /></a></span><br /><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.foe.org/major-tar-sands-oil-pipeline-spill-adds-doubts-about-controversial-keystone-xl-proposal">http://www.foe.org/major-tar-sands-oil-pipeline-spill-adds-doubts-about-controversial-keystone-xl-proposal</a></span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">For Immediate Release</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">May 5, 2011</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Contact:</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Marty Cobenais, Indigenous Environmental Network, <a href="mailto:ienpipeline@igc.org">ienpipeline@igc.org</a>, 218-760-0284<br />Kelly Trout, Friends of the Earth, <a href="mailto:ktrout@foe.org">ktrout@foe.org</a>, 202-222-0722</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Major Tar Sands Oil Pipeline Spill Adds to Doubts About Controversial Keystone XL Proposal</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Today, tribes and environmental organizations reiterated their call for the rejection of new of tar sands oil pipelines following a major tar sands oil pipeline spill in Alberta, Canada. Last Friday, a pipeline owned by Plains All American spilled over one million gallons of tar sands oil in the Peace Region of Northern Alberta. </span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The massive spill—larger even than the tar sands oil pipeline rupture that polluted Michigan’s Kalamazoo River last summer—reinforced public concerns over the growing use of tar sands oil in the U.S. and, in particular, about the controversial Keystone XL tar sands oil proposal. The Keystone XL project, proposed by Alberta-based TransCanada Pipelines, would stretch 1,700 miles </span><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% aqua; font-size: large;">from Canada across the American Midwest to</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow; font-size: large;">Texas</span><span style="font-size: large;"> and is currently under review by the Obama administration.</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Pipelines are not safe,” stated Sac &amp; Fox Principal Chief George Thurman, headquartered in Stroud, Oklahoma. “These leaks in Canada only verify our concerns with the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. We must protect the water, air, land and our significant cultural and historical sites for future generations, therefore, the Sac &amp; Fox Business Committee stands opposed to construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.”</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the U.S., tar sands oil pipelines have come under increasing scrutiny in the last year. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline has drawn opposition from a wide range of U.S. officials, including Nebraska Senator Mike Johanns (R). Nebraska’s Ogallala Aquifer, a source of water for many of the nation’s farms, could be polluted by spills from the Keystone XL pipeline.</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“These tar sands oil pipelines have been found to have serious safety risks,” said Marty Cobenais, pipeline organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network, citing a recent report by the Pipeline Safety Trust and Natural Resources Defense Council. “This report concluded that Alberta’s pipeline system, which mostly carries tar sands oil, has had 16 times more spills from internal corrosion than the conventional crude pipelines that are in the U.S.,” Cobenais added.</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">A week earlier, the Trans Mountain pipeline in Alberta was shut down following a spill. A pin-sized hole in the pipeline released an unknown amount of oil into the ground and a nearby creek before being discovered by local landowners.</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Last summer, a tar sands oil pipeline spilled nearly one million gallons of oil into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River, the largest oil spill in Midwest history. Nearly a year later, the impacts are still being felt and the EPA announced that a 30-mile section of the river will be closed to the public for this summer.</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Tar sands oil pipelines are simply not safe,” said Alex Moore, dirty fuels campaigner at Friends of the Earth. “The Peace Region spill once again shows the costs of our continued oil addiction. We should choose healthy children, clean water, and a strong clean energy economy over dangerous pipelines like the Keystone XL.” </span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Keystone XL pipeline is currently undergoing a second round of environmental review and a public comment period is open through June 6.</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">###</span></div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </div><div style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><pre style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></pre><pre style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></pre><pre style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director</span></pre><pre style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Indigenous Environmental Network</span></pre><pre style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">PO Box485</span></pre><pre style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Bemidji, MN 56619 USA</span></pre><pre style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ph: + 1 218 751 4967</span></pre><pre style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Fax: + 1 218 751 0561</span></pre><pre style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Email: <a href="mailto:ien@igc.org">ien@igc.org</a></span></pre><pre style="color: #783f04; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Web: <a href="http://www.ienearth.org/">www.ienearth.org</a></span></pre>WORKERShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05534040758601674402noreply@blogger.com0